


Of All The Ghosts

by luulapants



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, But not in the way you'd think, Character Death, Consensual Underage Sex, Dead Bros 4 Lyfe, Dead protagonist, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fanart, Ghost Sex, Ghost Stiles Stilinski, Ghosts, Graphic Format: GIF, M/M, Overstimulation, POV Stiles Stilinski, Panic Attacks, Peter Hale Dies, Slow Burn, Stiles Stilinski Accepts The Bite, Stiles Stilinski Dies, Stiles Stilinski Makes Bad Life Choices, Touch-Starved, Young Peter Hale, canon divergence - season 1, minor timeline fuckery, sensory issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 68,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21898234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luulapants/pseuds/luulapants
Summary: "Stiles didn’t need someone to walk through him to realize he was dead. He didn’t need to try to talk to someone only to be blatantly ignored. He knew it right away, the same way a person would know if a room was warm or cold. He felt dead."Stiles accepts the bite, and it doesn't take. Now he's stuck as a ghost and, just his luck, the asshole that killed him is dead, too.With title art by the incomparablemock-speed!
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 453
Kudos: 1313





	1. A Capital Mistake

Warning: image below flashes slightly

For the most part, Stiles’s dad left Stiles’s room to its own devices. Piles of dirty clothes, teenage funk, books and homework strewn about in a chaotic nightmare. Not his room, not his problem. And, despite his concern that Stiles stay on the right side of the law and school and new episodes of MTV’s _16 and Pregnant_ , for the most part he didn’t pry into any paraphernalia his room might be hiding.

“ _You’re becoming a man, and a man needs some privacy,_ ” he had told Stiles in one of his famously stilted father-son talks. Stiles was pretty sure that one had been paired with the masturbation talk, so he couldn’t exactly blame his dad for his awkwardness.

So it was odd, then, to see his father sitting on the end of his bed, hands folded in front of his mouth, eyes fixed on the floor in front of him. “I just don’t get it, son,” he said, voice soft, a little rasped. “Why you would keep all of that from me. Monsters. Werewolves. Hunters. I don’t get why you didn’t think you could tell me, after everything we’ve been through.”

“I didn’t know how,” Stiles whispered. He stood, leaning against his desk, staring at his dad and silently pleading for the man to look up at him, to look him in the face.

“I would have helped you. I would have believed you,” his dad said firmly. “Maybe I would have needed a little proof, sure, but I would have. If you were in trouble, you should have told me.”

Stiles’s throat tightened and he wiped at his eyes with his sleeve before tears could fall. He wasn’t sure why. He should have just bawled, let the tears stream down his face, screamed and shouted with how sad and angry and fucking scared he was. “I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I should have.”

The Sheriff sat quietly for a long time, just staring at that same spot on the floor. Finally, he sighed. “I just don’t get it,” he repeated, then stood and walked out the door.

* * *

  
  


Stiles remembered the bite.

He remembered the way Peter’s blood-red eyes bore into him as his teeth tore through the fabric of his dress shirt, buried themselves deep in the tender skin of his wrist. He expected spurts of blood, but none came for a moment, seemingly held in place by the burning, knee-buckling pain of the bite, the same way the scream he’d expected held taught in his throat, unvoiced.

Everything hung still, suspended, for what seemed an eternity.

Then the pain shot up his arm like a rocket, buried itself in the meat of his shoulder, crawled across his chest. His knees gave out, and Peter released his bite, letting Stiles sink onto the pavement of the parking garage. He heard a gurgling noise, like someone trying to scream with their mouth full of water. And then Stiles realized that _he_ was making those noises.

It hurt. It felt like his entire body had seized in an acute muscle cramp. Was this what it had been like for Scott? Why wouldn’t Scott have told him about this, about the bone-shaking agony?

Black spots dripped onto the pavement in front of him. Stiles lifted his wrist and saw the red blood mixed in with that same slick black liquid. He looked up at Peter and found horror on his face.

“S’happening?” he gurgled. He was drooling. No, not drool. Black stuff. It dribbled out of his mouth, down his chin.

Peter shook his head. “Come on. It’s fine. It’ll be fine,” he said. His nose wrinkled as he leaned down and scooped Stiles into his arms, bridal-style. Being tilted onto his back made Stiles choke on the black stuff pouring from his mouth, body convulsing with the cough. Peter opened the trunk of the Jeep and put Stiles on the floor, looking down at him.

People put corpses in trunks, Stiles thought. Bodies.

“Peter,” he choked.

“It’ll be fine. Your body’s adjusting to it,” the man lied.

“Not taking,” Stiles argued. He could hardly think behind the pain, but he focused on Peter’s words with everything he had. Peter was lying to him. The bite wasn’t taking.

Peter hesitated. “I’ve never seen it reject that quickly,” he said finally.

“How long?” Stiles asked.

Peter didn’t ask for clarification. They both knew what this meant. How long would it take for Stiles to die from this? “It’s usually slow,” Peter said, soft. He had a hand braced against the edge of the trunk opening. “But I don’t know. Could be fast with you.”

“Can we stop it?” Stiles pressed, and he was impressed Peter could understand him through his gurgling and coughing.

Peter frowned, like he was considering another lie. Instead he shook his head once and stepped back from the Jeep. “It’s done.”

He closed the trunk, and the sound reverberated through the aches in Stiles’s body like a gunshot. Scott had no idea where he was. Would he know what happened? And his dad. Oh, no, no, his dad. What the fuck was his dad going to do now? He’d be all alone.

Stiles sobbed, body curling in on itself as he convulsed and coughed and bled and wallowed in his own terror. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t die. His dad needed him. Scott needed him.

The black ooze came and came and came. When Stiles’s vision finally went black, he imagined that it was the ooze leaking over his eyes, covering them. Covering everything, like a cocoon. When caterpillars go into cocoons, they melt into goo, dissolving completely before reforming. He imagined he was like that, like a caterpillar dissolving so it could become something better. Stronger.

* * *

  
  


Stiles didn’t need someone to walk through him to realize he was dead. He didn’t need to try to talk to someone only to be blatantly ignored. He knew it right away, the same way a person would know if a room was warm or cold. He felt dead.

Dead was a difficult feeling to describe, which was just as well, since there was nobody to describe it to. At first, it felt a little like being naked somewhere you’re not supposed to be naked.

He had clothes on. At least, Stiles saw clothes when he looked down at himself. They weren’t really there, though, he supposed. Instead of the dress clothes he’d worn at prom, it was more familiar, comfortable clothes. Jeans. Sneakers. A graphic tee with a shark on it under a flannel.

Stiles came to – if dead people can “come to” – on the side of the road along the preserve. Miles from anywhere. Dead. His first thought was that he had to get home. Maybe he was dead, maybe he was a ghost, but he had to go see his dad. Maybe he could rattle some chains or write on a fogged mirror or something creepy and ghost-y like that, something to let his dad know he was there.

And then he had to walk three miles to get to his house. Great.

He didn’t feel tired or winded as he walked. His feet didn’t hurt. He didn’t really feel like anything except bare and untethered. Maybe it was the lack of a body making him feel so exposed. As he walked, Stiles thought about the logistics of his death. There hadn’t been anything around where he’d appeared, but he’d probably died in the back of his Jeep while Peter was driving it. Maybe that was the stretch of road where it finally happened.

He hoped Peter drove Roscoe too hard and killed it for good, so Stiles would have a ghost car to drive.

Figuring maybe his ghostly self wasn’t subject to the same limitations as a physical limitations as his physical body, Stiles broke into a run and found that just as effortless as the walking.

By the time he reaches his house, the sun had started peeking over the horizon and the driveway is empty. Stiles had been gone longer than he thought, then. Either it had taken him longer to die than he thought or there had been some sort of transition time between dead and ghost.

Stiles couldn’t open his front door, of course. His hand passed right through the knob. So he took a deep breath and stepped through the door. He tried to get some sleep, but it didn’t work. It was like his brain no longer understood the concept.

Right, no brain.

Reading and the computer were out, since he couldn’t get a book off the shelf or open his laptop. Instead, he curled up on the couch by the front door, waiting for his father to get home.

He cried a little.

When Stiles’s father returned home in late morning, he looked worn to the bone. He hung up his jacket and stood in the foyer for a long moment, just staring straight ahead.

“Dad?” Stiles said, though he already knew he wouldn’t be heard. He got off the couch. “Dad, I’m right here. I don’t know what happened to night, but I’m here. You have to know I’m here with you.”

He reached out, allowing his hand to pass through his father’s arm, and it was an unsettling feeling that made him recoil. His father shivered, sighed, and headed for the stairs. Stiles followed. While his dad got changed out of his uniform, Stiles stood in the hallway outside his room, listening as his dad left a voicemail for him on a phone he would never answer again.

“Stiles, it’s me. Again. Look, a lot went down tonight with the Hale and Argent thing. Scott doesn’t know where you are, and I’m really starting to get worried here. If you were involved in that whole mess, it doesn’t matter. Okay? We’ll figure it out. Just come home. Call me. Give me something so I know you’re not...”

This is where his dad would usually say ‘dead in a ditch somewhere,’ but instead he stopped himself.

Stiles thought he must know, on some level.

“Anyway, it’s 10AM, and I just got home. I’m going to get some shuteye, but I’ve got my phone next to me. You call me the second you get this, you hear me?”

Stiles slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. “I wish I could, Dad,” he murmured.

* * *

  
  


The next few days provided a steep learning curve. Stiles found that his clothes changed when he wasn’t paying attention. One moment he was wearing a flannel, the next a hoodie. It didn’t matter a whole lot, what with no one able to see him, but he spent some time experimenting, curious about the functionalities of death. He tried concentrating on changing them, but that didn’t work. What did work was simply convincing himself that he was already wearing something else.

He sat on the chair in front of his dad’s desk, eyes closed, saying, “Yeah, those really nice jeans I got for my birthday and never wear because I don’t want to fuck them up. I decided to put those on this morning, feeling a little posh, you know. No big deal. Just gotta look fresh when you’re dead.”

When he opened his eyes, he was in the nice jeans. Stiles smiled. It didn’t work with things he’d never worn before, and he was regretting not being more adventurous with his style, if only to alleviate the boredom.

Then his dad came into the office from behind him, talking on his cellphone. “He’s got freckles. He’s got a mole on his left cheek, next to his mouth.” He waited, pacing next to his desk. Stiles held his breath, wondering if he was talking to the morgue this time or if it was another hospital. His father’s face crumpled in relief, so it must be the morgue. “No? Okay. Okay, thank you.”

They hadn’t found his body yet.

* * *

  
  


Apparently, after his death, Kate Argent had attacked Derek and Scott out at the old Hale place. Then Peter Hale showed up and killed her. Then Derek, with the assistance of Scott, Jackson, and _Danny_ – of all people – had killed Peter.

Derek was the alpha now.

Most of the details of what had happened there, he’d gleaned by ghost-stalking Scott, who was now banned from seeing Allison, spending a lot more time with Jackson and Danny, and spending even more time helping his dad hang “Missing Person” fliers.

He’d ended up sitting next to Scott and Jackson at lunch while they filled Danny in on the whole werewolf thing, plus all of the drama related to it. Lydia hadn’t been turned, but she hadn’t died either. Stiles had been under the impression that those were the only two options, but apparently Lydia had picked a mysterious Door Number 3 that involved a coma and going into shock repeatedly. He hadn’t been to the hospital yet.

“So what about Stiles?” Danny asked. “How does he fit into all of this?”

Scott seemed to shrink back. “I don’t know. He was with Lydia at the formal before she got bit, but I didn’t see him leave with her. He just disappeared. I’ve been looking everywhere, trying to catch his scent, but he’s just… gone.”

“I’m _dead!_ ” Stiles snapped, angry and not really sure why he was angry at Scott of all people.

“I’m really sorry, man,” Danny said softly. “I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

It was people’s favorite thing to say about him these days. Like he was a misplaced remote and not a person who would never in a million years abandon his friend and his dad like this.

* * *

  
  


Stiles could ride in cars if other people were driving them, could even launch himself through the doors into them while they were moving, though that was a tricky bit of mental maneuvering. It meant waiting to hitch a ride from someone heading his direction, though. Thankfully, Scott ended up going a lot of the places he wanted to go anyway.

Like the hospital that evening.

It wasn’t like his crush on Lydia was paramount in his mind at this point. Being dead had pretty well killed any hope he ever had of being her dream guy. Still, as someone recently deceased of a werewolf bite, he was intensely curious about Lydia’s condition.

Leaving Scott at the reception desk to give his mom her dinner, Stiles headed down the hall, sidestepping the crowd to avoid unsettling collisions, and finally finding himself standing in Lydia’s hospital room. She was unconscious, like Jackson had said, breathing shallowly with a heart rate monitor beeping our a sluggish tempo beside her.

Her face was clean, no makeup. Stiles couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her like that. Maybe middle school. She looked younger, more vulnerable.

Stiles sat in the chair next to her bed and stared at her. “So the two of us, huh, Lydia?” he said softly. “Got ourselves into a bit of a mess here. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’d take your mess over mine any day, but at least I get to pick my wardrobe.”

He sat back and huffed a laugh. “God, you’d have a field day with these instant wardrobe changes.”

Behind him, the heart rate monitor started to pick up pace just slightly, and Stiles turned to look at it. He frowned, then looked at Lydia.

“Hey, look, I know they say people in comas can hear shit, but there’s no way you can hear me right now… right?”

The pulse on the monitor continued to rise, and Stiles stood. “Dude! Lydia, if you can hear me right now – Jesus, what a clusterfuck. Of course, the only person in the world that can hear me, and you’re in a coma. Come on, you gotta wake up and tell people I’m here!”

A nurse opened the door, and Stiles moved closer to the bed, impulsively plunging his hand through her stomach. “LYDIA!”

Lydia sat bolt upright, shrieking at the top of her lungs. The shriek made Stiles feel wobbly, out of control, like his whole being was vibrating with it. He’d closed his eyes from the force of it, and when he opened them again, he was standing outside the front doors of the hospital.

“What the fuck,” he breathed. Then, louder, “What the fuck!”

The sun had already set, leaving Stiles in the dark, staring ahead at the bright fluorescent shine of the hospital through the glass doors. A man jogged from behind him toward the doors and stopped just as Stiles shouted. He was silhouetted by the glow of the hospital, features in shadow as he turned back to look at Stiles. For a heart-stopping moment, Stiles thought he’d become corporeal again, that something about Lydia’s scream had made it so the living could see him.

Then the man walked straight through the closed doors like they were air.

Stiles’s jaw dropped open. It took a second for his ghostly brain to reboot before he shouted, “Wait!” and charged after the guy through the doors. “Hey, wait a second, ghost dude!”

He caught up in a hallway just past the reception desk and threw a hand out toward the man’s shoulder, finding it solid under his grasp. The man turned and, well, he wasn’t a _man_ really. He looked like he was Stiles’s age. Dark brown hair, pale blue eyes and a fierce sort of expression that didn’t make him look dangerous but exceedingly wary.

“Ghost dude?” said Ghost Dude.

“Well you are, aren’t you?” Stiles said, taking a step back. His hand was buzzing with the strangeness of feeling something solid after days of this odd detachment. “Like I am? Dead?”

The other boy studied Stiles slowly, reaching up and tugging at the hair hanging over his forehead, a fidget. “Yeah. I’m dead. Who are you?”

Stiles stuck his hand out to shake, sort of eager for more of that sweet, sweet physical contact with another being. “Stiles. What about you?” People were bustling around them, and Stiles had to shuffle a little closer to avoid being walked through.

After another moment’s hesitation, Ghost Dude shook his hand, a warm, heavy feeling in Stiles’s own, and said, “Peter.” Stiles must have blanched at the name because Peter frowned, brows furrowing, and squeezed his hand a little tighter. “Something wrong?”

Stiles pulled his hand back and ran a hand over his hair. “Sorry, just – Peter’s the name of the dude that killed me, actually. A few days ago.”

Peter’s eyes went comically wide and he took a shuffling half-step back. “Oh, God. Um, yeah, that’s awkward. You could call me Pete? Or, uh… my middle name’s Lee?”

“No, what? You don’t have to change your name,” Stiles protested.

“I mean, it’s not like it’s over nothing,” Peter said, tipping his head to the side. “Getting killed is pretty much the most traumatic thing that can happen to a person. So call me what makes you comfortable.”

Stiles felt himself relax a little. There was one other being on this planet, so far, that could both sense and interact with him, and he actually seemed pretty decent. “Thanks. Um, Pete. Pete’s good.”

“Are you the one the banshee was screaming for?” Pete asked.

“The what now?” Stiles blurted. “That was Lydia. She’s – I mean, she _was –_ I mean… well, we weren’t really friends, but we went to school together.”

“And she’s a banshee,” Pete said flatly, as if this were a very fundamental concept Stiles had failed to learn in grade school and not incomprehensible _what-the-fuck-ness_. Stiles stared at Pete for a long moment, and then he sighed and looked off down the hallway in the direction of Lydia’s room. “I guess we’re going to have to catch you up on some things.”

Just then, a nurse came rushing down the hall and barreled straight through the both of them. “God, I _hate_ that,” Stiles snapped, glaring at the retreating form.

Pete laughed and clapped a hand onto Stiles’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s find somewhere out of the way we can talk.”

* * *

  
  


They ended up in the back corner of a room with just one out of three beds occupied, all separated by thin blue curtains. Pete sat on the bed, legs crossed, and Stiles glanced at the chair briefly before sitting on the other end of the bed in a similar fashion.

“So how long have you been dead?” Stiles asked. “Or is that insensitive to ask or something?”

Pete cracked a smile and shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much in the way of ghost etiquette. Not enough of us, if you didn’t notice.”

Stiles frowned. “Yeah, what’s up with that? People die all the time. You’d think a hospital of all places would be crawling with them.”

Leaning back on his hands, Pete smiled at Stiles like he was impressed. “You didn’t do this on purpose, you mean? You accidentally became a ghost.”

“Uh, yeah,” Stiles said, the ‘duh’ implied. “I died and the next thing I knew I was like this.”

“Interesting,” Pete said slowly. After a moment, drumming his fingers on the taut sheets of the bed, he said, “There are plenty of ways to become a ghost, but there are a few elements that need to be present. A violent death, a concerted effort of will to stay, and some sort of supernatural effort, like a spell.”

So what was Pete then, a wizard? Stiles rubbed at the back of his neck. “You didn’t answer my question before. How long have you been dead?”

Pete blew out a breath. “God, you know I stopped counting. It’s 2011 now. I died in 1993, so… eighteen years? Jesus. Babies born when I died are voting now. Or, y’know, maybe not. The youth vote is always pretty dodgy, I hear. I wouldn’t know, I was seventeen.”

“And you’ve been stuck like this that whole time!?” Stiles squawked, horrified at the idea. He couldn’t imagine it. No sleep, no easy transportation, no internet, only able to watch what other people have on TV. Night time was _so boring_.

“You get used to it, I guess,” Pete said, lifting a shoulder.

The words weighed heavily on him, and Stiles had to scoot to the edge of the bed and take a few steadying breaths, expecting a panic attack. It didn’t come. Not even an edge of it. He looked over at Pete, who had leaned back against the pillows, seemingly trying to give Stiles space to process things.

“How do you know so much about this stuff anyway?” he pressed. “You became a ghost on purpose, right? So you knew about magic and shit before you died? I just learned about werewolves this year, so ghosts and spellwork and banshees is sort of… a lot.”

Pete folded his hands on his stomach. “I had an aunt that was really into magic. She taught me a lot before she died, and I’ve picked things up since then. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, you know.”

Stiles supposed that was as good a way as any to make the years pass. “So what’s with the banshee thing then? You think Lydia’s a banshee?”

“I know she is,” Pete said firmly. “You’re lucky that scream didn’t knock you right into the afterlife. That’s what it’s supposed to do. But she’s in here, so I’m guessing she’s not exactly at top strength, and you’re freshly dead, so maybe you’ve got a little something extra keeping you tethered.”

“Lucky I’m not going to the afterlife?” Stiles asked skeptically. “What, is it hellfire and brimstone?”

Shrugging a shoulder lazily, Pete said, “I wouldn’t know, now, would I? Once you go, you’re gone. If you wanted to stay here so badly you made yourself a ghost by mistake, I’m guessing it’s for a reason and you’re not about to head into the light on purpose.”

There was something about his mannerisms that struck Stiles as familiar. A little arrogant, maybe, like Jackson.

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Pete continued, “a banshee’s powers are related to death and to moving between the planes of life and death. Their screams can warn when people are about to cross from life to death and they can push people from this sort of in-between place we’re in and into the afterlife.”

The gears were clicking in his head, remembering the way Pete had jogged into the hospital as soon as he heard that scream. “Any chance they can move people back the other way?” he asked.

Pete’s face split in a grin. “Now that, my friend, is the million dollar question.”

* * *

  
  


They went to Lydia’s room, but neither of them got close as Stiles explained how he’d accidentally triggered her screaming. As they headed out of the hospital, Stiles told Pete what he knew about her situation: “She was bitten by a werewolf. He said that the bite either turns you or kills you – that’s what happened to me – but as far as they can tell, she hasn’t gone either way. The bite isn’t healing like it did with my friend Scott, and she’s still alive.”

They passed through the glass doors and into the night. It was odd, not being able to discern temperature as he moved outdoors. It made the transition seem less concrete.

“A bite can only turn a human,” Pete told him. “She’s having some sort of reaction to it, but she’s already a banshee. No room for fangs in that mess.”

“So she’ll be alright, then?” Stiles pressed. He stopped just shy of the street, turning to face Pete.

He shrugged. “Probably? I mean, I haven’t exactly seen it before. I’m hoping, though. I’ve been waiting a long time for this sort of opportunity.”

“To come back to life,” Stiles supplied.

“That’s kind of the idea of sticking around as a ghost,” Pete advised. “You don’t stick around just to spy on your old friends and watch reruns for eternity.” He jerked his head away from the hospital. “Where are you headed?”

Stiles looked out at the parking lot and swore. “Well, I hitched a ride here with Scott, but he’s already gone. Fuck, I guess I’m running home tonight.”

“Running?” Pete looked amused.

“Yeah. You know, faster than walking, not as fast as hitching a ride in a car?”

Pete shook his head. “God, I am gonna have to school you, aren’t I?” He paused, humming, then motioned for Stiles to stay still and walked about twenty feet away on the sidewalk. “Alright, start walking toward me.”

Stiles did, taking slow cautious steps.

“Now start running.” As soon as Stiles did, Pete said, “What’s the difference?”s

“Uh, I’m moving my legs faster?”

“What legs?”

Right. Stiles stopped, only a couple of feet shy of Pete and looked down at his legs.

“Does it feel any different, running and walking? Any more or less easy?”

“No. I don’t actually have legs or lungs or any of that shit,” Stiles answered, picking up what Pete was laying down easy enough.

“So why are you actually moving faster then?”

Stiles thought about his clothes, how he’d just had to decide that he was wearing something else, and he was. Slowly, he responded, “Because… because I’m expecting to move faster when I run. So I do.”

Pete smiled, and Stiles found he was starting to like that look, like Pete was surprised and impressed by him. “So if you just expect yourself to be somewhere else...” Pete said.

And like that, he was gone.

Stiles wheeled around and found the other boy standing back by the front doors, arms crossed over his chest and a self-satisfied smirk on his face. In another blink, he was directly in front of Stiles. “It does have some limitations. You have to have been there before.”

“Like my clothes,” Stiles said, and Pete raised an eyebrow. “I can decide to be wearing something else, but only things I’ve worn before.”

“Exactly. I don’t know if it’s a limit of imagination or something to do with ghosts living in the past or whatever, but new stuff doesn’t come to us as easily. So where are you headed?”

Stiles had originally been planning to go home, but his dad probably wasn’t home yet and Pete, he assumed, had never been in the Stilinski house. “Uh, have you been to the sheriff’s station?”

“Sure,” Pete agreed. “You ready to try getting there? If it doesn’t work and we get separated, just make your way there however you need to. But it will work. Close your eyes, picture the station. Tell yourself you’re there and believe it will happen.” There was a wise sort of tutelage about him that didn’t match his youthful face, but Stiles figured that could happen when someone was dead for nearly two decades.

Closing his eyes, Stiles did as Pete instructed, picturing the station, thinking of other times he’d been there, what the place looked like and sounded like.

When he opened his eyes, he was in the front lobby. Pete was already there, standing by the cork board of wanted and missing posters. He was staring at Stiles’s with a thoughtful expression.

Pete turned around. “That’s you, huh?” He flicked a hand through it, and the paper fluttered upward, as if in a wind.

Stiles grinned. “Please tell me you can teach me how to do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are the best! I love hearing how people are thinking about a story as I'm writing it.
> 
> I also made a [tumblr](https://luulapants.tumblr.com/), in case people prefer to chat with me over there. I haven't had a tumblr in eons, though, so keep them standards low on that front.


	2. An Obvious Fact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and his new ghost friend try to find out how to resurrect themselves.

“So how do you know about this place anyway?” Stiles asked, ducking under a low-hanging beam, then realizing he really didn’t have to duck at all. He peered ahead through the shadowy gloom of the cellar, Pete’s form disappearing into the shadows ahead of him.

His voice echoed back toward Stiles. “I think you’ll find there’s very little in this town that I don’t know about,” he said. Then, after a beat, he said, “You can see down here, by the way.”

“Huh?”

More purposefully, Pete enunciated, “You _can_ see down here. You know.”

“Right.” Expectations. Stiles shut his eyes. He could see down here, sure he could. He wasn’t using eyes, after all. What did it matter if there was light or no light? Just as the thought settled, he opened his eyes to find the cellar dimly lit by an unseen orange glow.

Wood beams lined the walls and ceiling, which gave the long, narrow room an unsettling, claustrophobic air. It was a bit like being in a coffin. Here and there in the layers of dust and dirt on the floor, glimpses of concrete peeked through. Toward the stairwell sat a small, round table, wood with copper inlays that had gone green, the patina sprawling into the wood and, along with the dirt, making the designs indiscernible.

Pete had stopped about halfway in, where three floor-to-ceiling metal bookshelves lined one of the walls. “This is where my aunt kept her books about magic and the supernatural,” he explained, eyeing the dusty spines with a frown. “I can’t even read the titles through this crap,” he complained.

Stiles appeared by Pete’s side, looking them over. “So you really think we can get these off the shelf to read them?” he asked.

“Yep. We’ll have to be creative about it, though. Stay here.” With that, Pete walked through the bookshelves. Stiles didn’t know if there were other cellars, other rooms, or just dirt behind them. He waited, fidgeting with the sleeve of his shirt and looking down toward the end of the cellar. At first glance, it looked like just more wood paneling, but Stiles could just make out a split in the wood beams…

Pete burst through the bookshelf at full speed, not quite head-on to Stiles, but near enough that he caught Stiles’s right shoulder with his own, sending them both sprawling onto the ground. Stiles shouted and flailed as he fell, grabbing onto Pete, who landed half on top of Stiles.

“Sorry about that,” Pete said. “You mind letting me go?”

“What? Oh, right, yeah,” Stiles said, a little dazed. He loosened his grip, and Pete rolled off. They both looked up at the bookshelf. In the section of shelf where Pete had barreled through, all of the books had been pushed forward a bit, some more than others. “Great,” Stiles said. “Just do that, like, ten more times and we’ll have books on the floor.”

“Then we have to get them open,” Pete reminded him.

“Lucky thing we don’t have to sleep,” Stiles sighed. “This is going to be the longest study session of my life.”

Pete looked over at him, tipped his head and gave him a sarcastic smirk.

“Right. ‘Of my death’.” Stiles rolled his eyes. “Now, come on, show me how you did that.”

* * *

Moving things wasn’t an easy skill to pick up. It required splitting one’s focus: intense concentration on the feeling of being solid, intense concentration on the force of one’s movements, a strong emotion, and a physical movement through the object in question.

Stiles sort of sucked at it.

Pete had to do almost all of the work on getting the books off the shelves and getting the heavy covers open, but Stiles had gotten the hang of turning pages, at least. They had to read sitting on the ground, hunched over the books, sometimes at awkward angles because of where the books had fallen. A lot of them weren’t relevant to their topic, but others talked about magical energies and spirit planes.

“While we’re at it, we might as well figure out what the hell you are,” Pete noted, clenching his jaw as he dragged a hand through a book to turn the page.

Stiles lifted an eyebrow at him. “ _What_ I am?”

Pete glanced at him, eyes flitting over Stiles’s lanky form, stretched out on his stomach in front of a book about classifications of supernatural creatures. If someone had told him a couple months ago that learning about the supernatural would be this dry and boring, he wouldn’t have believed them.

“You think I’m some sort of creature,” Stiles pressed, waving a hand at his book.

“Humans don’t become ghosts without actively doing something to make it happen,” Pete insisted. “You had to have some sort of magic involved.”

Stiles propped his chin on his hand. “What, being bitten by a werewolf isn’t magical enough for you?”

Pete opened his mouth to respond, then seemed to second-guess himself and clicked his jaw shut. Finally, he asked, “What happened? If you don’t mind me bringing it up. After you were bitten, what happened?”

He thought back to that pain, the terror, the black ooze. It must have shown on his face, because Pete quickly added, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

Shaking his head, Stiles pushed through, sticking to the broad strokes. “It happened right away. The second he bit me, I started to die. He said… he told me it doesn’t usually happen that fast.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete said quietly, and Stiles could feel that he really was, that he regretted that Stiles had died like that. Stiles probably wouldn’t have blamed the guy for being happy that Stiles was dead if only so he could have someone to talk to, but he was sincerely sorry.

“What about you?” Stiles asked. “Do you… do you mind talking about it?”

Pete hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I… I can’t. Talk about it, I mean.”

“Okay,” Stiles agreed.

“Sorry.”

Stiles sat up and scooted over to him, placing a hand on Pete’s shoulder. They hadn’t talked about it, but he suspected that the touches were just as comforting for Pete as they were for him, if not more. How long had he gone without feeling something like that? “Hey, getting killed is pretty much the most traumatic thing that can happen to a person, right?” he said, lifting one corner of his mouth in a lopsided smile.

Pete wrapped a hand around Stiles’s wrist, just holding it.

“I can’t imagine what it was like, being on your own all that time,” Stiles said. “I can’t imagine doing this without someone else here with me.”

For a moment, Pete held his gaze, something soft and vulnerable and a little broken in his expression. Then he cleared his throat, patted the back of Stiles’s hand, and said, “You’re a little touchy-feely, you know?” He looked back down at his book.

* * *

They spent the entire night in the cellar library, which was hidden beneath some shops in downtown Beacon Hills. As soon as morning rolled around, Stiles explained that he had to go check on his dad, and they agreed to meet back in the cellar around sunset.

That was one nerve-wracking aspect of this newfound partnership: if they got separated unexpectedly, there wasn’t a good way to find one another again. They could try flitting in and out between places they’d both been, but actually losing one another seemed like a real and terrifying possibility.

When Stiles got to his house, his dad was in uniform already, a cup of coffee in his hand as he read through a police network on his computer, for bodies and hospital patients labeled John Doe.

He was really driving himself nuts over all of this, and Stiles couldn’t decide if his hope of finding Stiles made it better or worse. If he knew Stiles was dead, it would crush him, but at least he might be able to move on. If he and Pete didn’t pull off this resurrection thing, his dad could spend his whole life searching for a son he’d never find.

Stiles sat at the kitchen table across from his dad, watching him sadly. “If I could just say a few words to you and have you hear them,” he bargained softly. “Come on, Dad.”

The doorbell rang, and the sheriff rose from the table, leaving his coffee behind. Stiles followed after and saw Scott standing at the front door. That was no surprise – Scott had been helping to hang missing persons posters. At this rate, the whole town was going to be papered in Stiles’s face.

What was a surprise was the man standing behind Scott: Derek.

The sheriff’s eyes flitted between Scott and Derek, an eyebrow lifting. “Scott? What’s this about, then?” he asked, a warning in his voice. His dad had been digging into Derek again. He’d been cleared of any responsibility when it came to the murders Peter and Kate had done, but he was involved in “the whole thing” as his dad liked to refer to it, and he had a strong hunch that Derek knew more than he was letting on.

“Uh, I know you probably have to go into work soon,” Scott said, and he looked like he’d just swallowed something gross, shifting from foot to foot. “But there’s something we really need to tell you. It’s about what happened with Kate. And about Stiles.”

* * *

From what Stiles could tell, it had actually been Derek’s idea to come clean to the sheriff about werewolves. Still, he didn’t say much except to fill in details Scott didn’t know, mostly about his own family’s history. Scott fessed up to everything like a kid that stole candy from a store and went back to return it, wracked with guilt.

They had had gone upstairs to Stiles’s room, because Scott wanted to show the sheriff all of the notes and print-outs Stiles had on the matter. His dad looked concerned, but in more of a ‘my son was part of a mass delusion’ sort of way than an ‘oh crap werewolves are real’ way.

“Forgive me if I say this sounds a little far-fetched,” his dad said, sounding irritated. He was pacing the room, Scott seated at Stiles’s desk and Derek standing against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. “In fact, Scott, it sounds insane and like a waste of my time.”

Derek sighed, stepped forward, and held a hand out toward the sheriff, palm-down. He extended his claws, then retracted them again. When Stiles’s dad, stunned and wide-eyed, looked up at Derek’s face, he flashed his eyes. “It’s real, Sheriff.”

Stiles’s dad sat on the end of the bed heavily, hands rubbing at his knees. Stiles was a little worried he might be having a heart attack from the look on his face, but he was in a room with two werewolves, after all. They would hear if that was happening.

“So you’re saying Stiles went off to, what, to fight a werewolf?” he asked.

Scott scooted forward in his chair. “We don’t know. I told you the truth about that part. Stiles was at the formal with us, then he walked out. We didn’t see him after that. And I’ve been looking everywhere. We have stronger senses of smells. Werewolves, I mean. And I’ve been trying to scent him, but it’s like he’s just gone.”

“Or like someone covered his scent up on purpose,” Derek said, grave.

His dad shook his head, then looked up at Derek. “And who would know how to do that?”

Derek tipped his head to the side, considering. “A hunter or a werewolf. Stiles wouldn’t have known how to do it on his own. Someone had to have taken him.”

“For what?” his dad demanded, getting riled up again.

“Information, maybe? It’s hard to say, but we’re still looking. We’re not giving up on him.”

The talk didn’t last long after that. Scott apologized again and again for keeping it all from him, and then he and Derek left his dad sitting on the end of his bed, slumped forward and tired-looking.

“I just don’t get it, son,” he said.

* * *

Stiles and Pete put in a good five more hours of research that evening. They sat closer this time, both working on books near one another on the floor, though they could just as easily have picked different ones. They sat leaned against one another at the shoulder, fingers touching just slightly where their hands rested on the floor.

Finally, Pete pulled back, stretching his arms over his head, and declared, “That’s it, I seriously need a change of scenery. Do you want to get out of here?”

“God, yes,” Stiles agreed.

After running through lists of places, trying to find one they had both been to before, they decided on a diner out near the highway. They couldn’t eat, but it had a homey, warm atmosphere, and it was open 24/7, so the lights would still be on.

Sitting in a booth across from Pete, Stiles asked, “Okay, so how did you not die of boredom all this time? I mean, I get following people around during the day and watching TV over people’s shoulders, but night time is _so boring_.”

Pete traced unseen little designs on the tabletop between them, and their feet bumped together under the table. “I suppose you just find things to do. Make up stories in your head, make up games for yourself. Hell, do math problems in your head. It’s not like we can use scratch paper or a calculator – it’s good practice.”

“Jeez, I guess.” Stiles shook his head, glancing around the diner.

There was one old man curled up in a booth on the end, the waitress talking to him in soft tones. Two booths behind him, a couple of young women, clearly tipsy, were giggling to each other over a stack of pancakes. It was eleven o’clock, and the diner would only empty out as the night went on.

“What sort of games do you make up?” Stiles asked, turning back to Pete.

“Chess, mostly,” Pete answered, then before Stiles could ask about not having a board, he tapped his temple. “I have to keep it all up here, of course. Sometimes I’ll go watch people play in the park, but it gets frustrating, not being able to pick the moves myself.”

Stiles smiled. “I play chess. You think we could keep up a game between both of us? Just remember the moves?”

Pete smiled at him, considering. “I think we could make that work.” He took a deep breath, sitting back in the booth, and closed his eyes. Stiles realized he was picturing the board and did the same. “White or black?” Pete asked.

“White,” Stiles answered. He imagined the board in front of him, took a breath. “Pawn to e4,” he said. In his mind, he saw the piece slide forward.

“Pawn to e5,” Pete said easily, not a moment’s hesitiation.

Stiles grinned. Pete was going for the Sicilian defense, most likely. “Pawn to c3,” he answered, and peeked an eye open to see Pete frowning across from him. It took him a long moment to respond.

“Knight to f6.”

Pete put up a good fight, trying to rally his defense, but he’d realized Stiles’s strategy too late. They were quite a few moves from checkmate when Pete huffed a laugh and nudged Stiles’s foot under the table. Stiles opened his eyes and saw the other boy grinning at him.

“I’ve lost,” Pete admitted.

“Yeah, you have,” Stiles agreed. “It was a good effort, though.”

“You know, I wasn’t sorry to have company around in any shape, but if I had to be stuck on this ghostly plane with anyone, you’re a solid choice.”

“You’re welcome,” Stiles quipped. “You know, for dying.”

Pete’s smile drooped a little, and he started to say, “That’s not what I -” but Stiles cut him off.

“I know that’s not what you meant,” he said, waving a hand. “Now come on, best two out of three.”

* * *

The next night, still sick of their dingy basement and increasingly pessimistic about the resources therein, Pete brought Stiles to the veterinary clinic.

“You think Dr. Deaton has magic books?” Stiles asked skeptically. “I mean, the dude’s a little cagey and he definitely didn’t freak out about me and my buddy kidnapping him as much as he should have? But he doesn’t exactly seem like a sorcerer.”

Pete breezed through the wall of the building into the kennel, where a few cats hissed as he and Stiles walked through the room. “You and your friend kidnapped a veterinarian?” he asked.

“We thought he was the alpha werewolf,” Stiles defended, as if that was totally reasonable.

“And?”

“And he super was not, and he could have gotten killed by the real alpha werewolf, and we never actually said sorry about it, and – oh, God, am I a sociopath?”

Pete hummed. “Only in the sense that most teenagers are.”

Stiles supposed that was fair. Pete disappeared from beside him as they entered the exam room, appearing ahead of him on the other side, in front of a door marked ‘Utility.’ “I think this is it,” he said. Pete stepped forward and immediately stumbled back, the door flashing a bright red as he seemed to bounce off of it.

“Dude, what the hell?” Stiles asked, jogging ahead to put a steadying hand on Pete’s back. The other boy’s lip was curled in anger as he glowered at the door. “Mountain ash,” he snapped.

“And for those of us that didn’t go to Hogwarts?”

“It’s a substance that creates barriers against supernatural creatures,” he explained. “He’s probably using it to keep werewolves out of here.”

“And why would Deaton be worried about werewolves getting into his secret stash of magic books?” Stiles pressed.

Pete looked over at him with a knowing look that struck Stiles as exceedingly familiar. “Let’s just say Deaton is a bit more involved in all of this than you knew.”

Stiles stepped forward toward the door, trying to see the substance that had kept Pete out. “So, what, he just puts some of this stuff down and, boom, no more werewolves up in his business? I wish someone had told me about that _before_ I died.” He moved to press his hand against the barrier, to feel whatever had repelled Pete.

Instead, his arm sunk through the door up to his elbow. Stiles froze, arm stuck through the door, then turned to stare at Pete, who was staring back with a look of wide-eyed disbelief that must have mirrored Stiles’s own.

“That’s not possible,” Pete said firmly. “You’re a ghost. The mountain ash should work on you.”

Stiles pulled his arm out of the door, then plunged it back in a few more times in demonstration. “And yet,” he said, turning and backing his way halfway through the door so the back half of his body was submerged in it.

“Oh, we have _got_ to figure out what the hell you are,” Pete decided with a smirk.

Stiles shimmied from one foot to the other through the door, schooling his face to serious even as he gave his insane-looking little victory dance. “So what’s the plan here, Petey? Any way I can break the mountain ash line to get us both in?”

Pete stepped up and placed his hands against the wall next to the door and shook his head. “If I’m right, he probably has it built into the door and walls somehow. You’ll have to go in on your own and shout back to me about what you find.”

Stiles stopped his dance, shoulders sagging. “Dude, you know I can’t get the books off the shelves like you can.”

“You’re going to have to,” Pete insisted. “Go on in, and I’ll talk you through it.”

Stiles stepped into the room. While a little larger than a utility closet, the room would have struggled to hold three people and their personal space. Along one wall were shelves of jars and boxes, all meticulously labeled with things like ‘Viscum album’ and ‘Aconitum coreanum.’ The shelves on the opposite wall held books in very much the same style as their creepy basement library, minus the dust. A few small boxes sat pinched between tomes like _Magii Antice_ and _The Power of Consciousness_. Despite the unlit single light bulb hanging from the ceiling, Stiles assured himself that he could see just fine, leaving the room in a dull sort of gray light.

“Alright, there’s a bunch of herbs and shit, I guess? And then a wall of books,” he called out.

Pete’s voice came, muffled through the door. “Alright, just like we did the other night, you’re going to walk through the bookshelf, give yourself a nice head start, then run back through.”

“While thinking about ten thousand things at the same time, all very intently,” Stiles sassed back.

“Just take a deep breath, Stiles. Think of it like you thought about moving from place to place. It’s all about expectation, right? Expect yourself to be solid. Expect yourself to be forceful. You’re running through a bookshelf, that’s bound to knock a few books loose, right?”

Stiles closed his eyes, visualizing the books falling, like they had in the cellar, the way they’d jumped forward, like Pete had caught them by surprise.

“Find an emotion to anchor those expectations onto,” Pete continued, and his voice sounded different through the door. “Think about what those books are going to do for you, how badly you want to be alive again. Or think about what was already done to you. Aren’t you angry that you’re dead, Stiles?” In his mind, he could almost hear Pete’s voice shifting into another, the last voice he’d heard alive.

Peter, staring down at him, saying, “It’s done,” like he was talking about a movie and not Stiles’s life.

On the other side of the door, Pete went on. “Use that. Use your emotions. Why the hell shouldn’t you be solid enough to push a book off a damn shelf? You would be if you were alive. You _should_ be.”

Stiles took a deep breath, sinking all of his thoughts into that anger, that idea that a few damn books shouldn’t be in his way. He should be alive. He walked through the books, through the wall, and kept going outside into the parking lot. Once he’d given himself a good lead, Stiles turned and honed in on that anger one more time. He should be there for his dad and Scott and the rest. He should be going to school and getting ignored by girls, not watching his father fall apart searching for a son he’d never find.

He sprinted at the wall of the building and burst through in a clatter of books and knickknacks flying off the shelves. One struck the lowest shelf of the opposite wall, knocking a jar of powder to the floor where it shattered.

Stiles stood in the mess, looking around at the scattered books and boxes and broken glass. “Holy shit,” he said quietly, then louder, so Pete could hear, “Holy shit! Holy shit, I did it!”

After a moment, he heard Pete laugh and say, “Fuck.” Another beat, and then Pete yelled through, “Well, assuming you didn’t demolish the books on your way through, tell me what you’ve got that you can read through.”

“Coming right up,” he called back. Most of the books had fallen on their spines, thankfully. Stiles dropped to his knees in front of the nearest one. “ _Spiritual Herbs of North America_ ,” he read from the page header.

“Pass,” Pete called back. “Next one?”

Three books in, Stiles found a book about meditation and astral projection that Pete liked the sound of. He flipped the pages back as fast as he could manage, to get back to the table of contents.

Stiles stopped short. There was a photograph being used as a bookmark, glossy and in vivid color but worn around the edges. He moved around the book so he could look at it right-side-up. In it, a large family stood in front of a house on a spring day, tulips flowered along the side of a long driveway. On one end, he saw a preteen boy with dark hair and thick eyebrows. Next to him, one arm slung over his shoulders, was Pete.

With careful effort, Stiles flipped the picture over. On the back, someone had printed the words, _Hale Family, 2002_.


	3. The Half-Told Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles struggles in dealing with his new ghost pal's real identity.

In retrospect, Stiles felt stupid as hell. A ghost named Peter in Beacon Hills with knowledge of the supernatural and, more specifically, an interest in Lydia. Sure, “Pete” told some pretty smooth lies to misdirect suspicion, but Stiles’s sad, metaphysical excuse for a brain hadn’t even conjured any suspicions to misdirect.

And, sure, ‘Pete’ didn’t look much like the adult that Stiles had known on first glance, but now that the realization had set in, _yes he did_. Blue eyes, thick eyebrows, long nose, sharp chin. Hell, the mannerisms. Stiles hadn’t had many opportunities to take a long, hard look at Peter when he wasn’t fighting for his life, but the moments before his death were scorched into Stiles’s brain. The tilt of Peter’s head, the slight widening of his eyes, the press of his lips and clench of his jaw.

‘ _You can call me Pete_.’ Stiles didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Peter must have thought he was a complete idiot.

Stiles had sat crouched in Deaton’s back room, frozen. For a moment, he worried that Peter would hear his heart thudding, and for once he was thankful to remember he didn’t have a heart anymore.

“Stiles?” Peter had called through the door. “Did you find something?”

Stiles licked his lips and stared down at the lettering on the back of the photo. _Hale Family, 2002_. He could barge out right then, tell Peter to fuck off and never talk to him again. He could strangle him, see if that werewolf strength had carried over into the afterlife. See if it was possible to kill a ghost.

But then he would be alone. Worse, he might never get resurrected.

“Just having some trouble with the pages,” Stiles called, willing his voice to come out steady.

* * *

The next morning, Stiles went back to his house and threw something not unlike a tantrum in his room, screaming, pacing through his room, ranting at the top of his lungs, though no one could hear. “That _bastard_!” he snarled, flinging an arm at the top of his dresser. Various odds and ends had been stacked on top of it – loose change, his calculator, pens and a notebook. They went flying, clattering to the floor.

Stiles stared at them, mouth hanging open. He hadn’t even meant to do it.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and then his father was standing in his open bedroom door, looking around wildly. Stiles glimpsed an agonizing hope on his face, but it faded almost immediately. He stepped inside, casting his gaze around the room, eyes settling on the things Stiles had knocked onto the floor. Frowning, the sheriff placed a hand on his knee and squatted down to inspect them without touching. He looked up, toward the closed window, then stood and looked around the room again.

This was his chance. Stiles just had to make some sort of movement for his dad to see. He rushed to his desk and swiped a hand at an empty water bottle sitting next to his laptop. It didn’t move. Fuck. Stiles tried to focus. Expect to be solid, expect to have force. Focus on an emotion. Fuck, was desperation an emotion? He swiped again. Nothing.

His dad turned and headed out of the room.

“No! Dad, come back, I’m gonna get it!” Stiles shouted, swiping frantically at the bottle. His hand slid through it like air. “Dad!”

The stairs creaked as his dad headed back downstairs.

* * *

“You’re looking a little worse for wear,” Peter commented when they met at the clinic for their nightly research session. There were a few more books that Peter wanted to poke through. It meant Stiles would have to spend the whole night talking to Peter, reading the books aloud to him instead of reading their own books in silence. On the plus side, it meant not looking the psycho in the face, pretending he didn’t know who he was, for most of the night.

Instead of punching ‘Pete’ like he wanted to, Stiles shoved down his anger and gave a half-truth. “I tried to move some stuff for my dad to see, but it didn’t work.”

“He’s still looking for you?”

Stiles nodded. They had talked a little bit about it after Pete first saw his ‘Missing’ poster. “I don’t think he’s been sleeping. He’s hardly eating. He just looks for me and calls hospitals and calls my friends.” It occurred to him that Peter was the cause of all this. Peter was the one that made it so no one could find his body, covered up his scent and did God-knows-what with his Jeep. He didn’t know if a man like Peter was capable of guilt, but he hoped talking about this made the man feel guilty. “He’s a wreck. I just wish… like, it’ll crush him if he finds out, but it’s got to be better than this, right?”

Peter looked away, eyes casting to the floor. His jaw twitched. “Any truth is better than indefinite doubt,” he said softly.

“What’s that?” Stiles asked.

“I think I read it somewhere,” Peter said. He shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

Stiles returned to the utility closet and read Peter more of the book on astral projection. It had a lot of information on ghost and spirit planes and levels of consciousness. Then they moved on to a book recounting famous spellwork in medieval Europe. It was written in Latin, which Stiles didn’t speak, but Peter did.

“It’s fine, just sound it out as best as you can,” Peter called. It was agonizing to get through, Stiles fumbling through unfamiliar words and Peter asking him to repeat things and skip ahead – “ _No, go back, I think we missed something.”_

Stiles felt like he was going cross-eyed reading through it. He didn’t even have the brain capacity left to think about the murderer on the other side of the door. “Et cum spiritu redibant ad pristinum eos,” he read. “Et revixit perierat et inventus est homo.”

“The spirit returned to its original body,” Peter translated. “The man came back to life.”

“So the resurrection worked?” Stiles clarified, lifting from his fog at the prospect.

“It sounds like it,” Peter agreed, sounding as excited as Stiles felt. The book told the story of a warrior who won the love of a banshee, then died young. The banshee performed a spell to tether the warrior’s spirit to earth, then went on a quest to resurrect her hero. There was a protracted section of the banshee brought his corpse to the nymphs, who refused to help, then this group, who refused her also. And on and on and on until Stiles wanted to stab his eyes out. Finally, an alpha werewolf agreed to help her, and they performed a spell under a “flooded moon.”

This could be it. This could be their ticket to the land of the living. Stiles stared at the long, looping writing he’d been cursing for the past hour. “Oh my God, this stupid book is the _best_ book.”

Peter laughed. “Alright, I want some time to think that over. Why don’t we head back to the diner?”

The suggestion brought their situation flooding back to him, and Stiles had to close his eyes and center himself for a moment before he got up and walked through the door. “Yep, let’s head out!” he agreed brightly, pasting on a smile.

* * *

Peter slid into the same side of the booth as him without comment. They’d been getting a bit more friendly with touches over the past few days, so it really wouldn’t have raised Stiles’s hackles if this were Pete, his new ghost buddy, and not Peter, the maniac that killed him. Stiles forced himself to not react, to settle and smile over at Peter as they sat close, arms touching.

They played through a game of memory chess, and Stiles lost, feeling paranoid about every move Peter made against him. Instead of calling for a rematch, he asked about the spell.

“The flooded moon could mean a hundred things,” Peter said, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest as he looked up at the ceiling. “It could be a full moon, maybe. Or a reference to a time of year? Hell, it could even be a moon during a rainstorm.”

Stiles leaned forward on his elbows. It put his back to Peter, but it also put a bit of space between them without him having to scoot away. “What about the body thing?” he asked. “It said the banshee returned the spirit to the body. Do you still have a body somewhere?”

Peter hummed. “I was buried. I know where my plot is.” He hesitated, and then a hand settled onto Stiles’s shoulder blade, gentle, and it took every ounce of willpower in his body not to shake it off. “But you don’t know where yours is.”

In his mind, Stiles had wrapped his hands around Peter’s stupid neck already, but he just clenched his teeth, counted to five, then shook his head. “No.” No, he didn’t, but Peter did. What had Peter done with his body? Dumped it in the woods? Burned it? Put it in his Jeep and sunk it into a lake?

The hand on his back was petting him, trying to comfort him. If he had had blood, it would be boiling, but Stiles let Peter play the dutiful friend. “Maybe I can help you find it.”

Despite his revulsion at the situation, Stiles felt glad that he hadn’t blown this whole thing yet. Stiles sat up again, turning toward Peter. He wanted to lay it on thick, cozy up so his good friend Pete would have no choice but to help him out. “Do you think you could?” he asked, trying for nervous but hopeful. “Like, maybe a spell or something to find it?” A spell like just zapping himself over to wherever he’d dumped Stiles. Stiles leaned in, a hand on Peter’s thigh.

Peter smiled at him, his hand sliding down to Stiles’s waist. “Sure, I’ll figure something out. You leave that to me, okay?” His other hand came up, cupping Stiles’s cheek. “It’s all going to work out, Stiles. Okay? We’re going to get you back to your dad.”

Stiles couldn’t tell if this was an act Peter was putting on or if maybe he really did feel guilty about killing a kid and making his dad sick with worry. In either case, he smiled back. “Thanks.”

And then Peter was kissing him.

He held Stiles close, the hand on his cheek moving to the base of Stiles’s skull, the hand around his waist squeezing as warm lips moved against his. For a moment, all Stiles could think was that it felt _good_. It felt real in a way that nothing had since he’d died.

Since Peter killed him.

Stiles punched Peter in the side of the head.

“Ow, what the -!”

“I know who you are, asshole!” Stiles snapped before he could stop himself.

He huffed at Peter’s baffled expression, and in a second he was standing beside the booth, arms crossed over his chest, glaring daggers at Peter. So much for keeping up the charade.

Peter stayed in the booth, though he turned to face Stiles with a cautious expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stiles.”

“Oh, so there’s a second Peter Hale walking around?” He saw a muscle in Peter’s jaw twitch and felt a bit triumphant. “I saw a picture of you and your family in Deaton’s utility room.

“Why didn’t you say before, then?” Peter asked, then smiled and held up a hand. “Ah, no, I see. You lied for the same reason I lied. Because you didn’t want to risk being left on your own to figure out this resurrection thing.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Such a cunning scheme, and all it took was one little kiss to trip you up.”

Stiles scowled at him, and he wondered if his face was flushing with imaginary blood. “Look, I could pretend to be your buddy. I can lie and play nice with the best of them. But I am not about to let the guy that killed me, who has killed a fuck-ton of other people,” he ranted, waving his arms for dramatic effect. “A creepy guy _in his thirties_ pretending to be a seventeen-year-old – I’m not about to let _you_ feel me up in exchange for information. No way, no how. I am not that kind of girl.”

Peter set an elbow on the table and propped his chin in his hand, smiling at Stiles like this was his favorite game. “It was a kiss, Stiles. I didn’t grab your dick.”

“Creepy!” Stiles snapped. “God, do you seriously see nothing wrong with hitting on a guy you killed? You’re like one of those serial killers that gets off on screwing corpses!”

Wrinkling his nose at that accusation, Peter rolled his eyes. “You’re being dramatic. And, for the record, you keep talking about me killing you like I murdered you in cold blood. I offered you the bite. You accepted. You knew the consequences. At worst, I’m guilty of...” He waved a hand carelessly as he summoned the right words. “Involuntary manslaughter.”

Stiles’s lip curled in anger. “Oh, thank you,” he snarked. “That distinction gives me so much comfort.”

“It should,” Peter argued. “I was very disappointed with the way things went.”

“Disappointed,” Stiles echoed, shaking his head. He stepped back. “You know what? I don’t give a fuck how useful you are. I’ll figure out the resurrection on my own. I’ll find my own goddamn body. You stay the hell away from me, got it?”

Stiles closed his eyes and willed himself away.

* * *

He did try to figure things out on his own. If the motivation of bringing himself back to life hadn’t been enough, his desperate boredom would have been enough to get him working.

During the day, Stiles kept following his dad and Scott, trying to keep up with their lives. His dad didn’t have much of one, still disintegrating before Stiles’s eyes in a way that got harder to watch every day. Scott wasn’t in such bad shape, but he had other problems to distract him.

“Any word on Derek?” Danny asked, turning around in his desk. He and Scott sat together the way that Stiles and Scott used to sit together, and it made him burn a little with jealousy.

Scott shook his head. “He’s in the wind. He promised he was going to help with Stiles, too. I don’t know why I thought I could trust him.”

“Jackson’s been pretty scarce, too,” Danny said. “When I do see him, he’s all cagey and doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s never been like this before.”

“Do you think it’s about Lydia?” Scott suggested. “My mom said he’d been to the hospital, but it didn’t sound like he was camped out there or anything.”

Danny shrugged a shoulder. “I have no idea. I just know something’s going on with him.”

After school that day, Scott met up with Allison, who he’d hardly seen since everything went down. Since her father banned her from seeing Scott. Since she found out her aunt was a serial killer and then watched Peter kill her. They drove out to a secluded area, and it was a fifty-fifty thing if they were going to share vital intel or make out.

The odds were not in his favor.

Stiles was about to leave and find someone else to haunt while Scott got busy when the roar of another engine cut through the relative silence around them.

Chris Argent. Allison’s father. Stiles recognized the SUV as it roared across the grass toward them. It all happened so fast after that. Scott and Allison leaping from the car, Chris grabbing Scott and putting a gun to his head. Allison screaming, begging him to stop.

Stiles was helpless, shoving his hands at Chris without effect, though the feeling of intersecting a living body made him shudder with discomfort. Scott needed him. His best friend needed him, and there was nothing Stiles could do.

Allison diffused the situation in the end. When Chris finally stepped back, Stiles saw him shudder and rub at the arm Stiles had been shoving. As far as he could tell, living people disliked the experience of intermixing with a ghost just as much, though not enough to think anything of it.

Once the Argents were gone and out of sight, Stiles followed Scott back into his car, sitting in the passenger seat. Scott picked up his phone and unlocked it, then froze, staring at it, before setting it back down. He blew out a slow breath and slumped forward onto the steering wheel.

“God, Stiles, where the hell are you?” he sighed.

* * *

That night, Stiles went to the hospital, if only for a place to go where people would still be awake. He wandered, people-watched, checked on Lydia. No change since the screaming incident. He went back to Deaton’s, but all of the books in English had either been read or deemed useless. He thought about going to the cellar library, but didn’t want to risk running into Peter. He went out to the old Hale place, hoping to find out what Derek had been up to. When he found it empty, Stiles searched around for a hint as to where Peter’s body might have ended up, but that proved just as useless.

At the end of the night, he ended up watching the sunrise from the lookout point, listless and out of ideas for activities to fill his nights with. He tried to imagine that he could feel the change in temperature as the sun rose over the horizon, that he’d been cold and he was slowly warming with the dew on the grass. Stiles couldn’t conjure the feeling, though.

* * *

After four days of isolation, Stiles was ready to go out of his head. Watching his dad made him depressed. Watching Scott made him stressed. And wandering Beacon Hills with nothing to do every night was making him fucking bonkers.

On the fourth night, it occurred to Stiles that all of the stories about poor Pete surviving as a ghost on his own for eighteen years had been complete bullshit. Peter had been dead for less time than he had, and Stiles had no idea if it was possible to stay as a ghost for long. After all, he’d yet to encounter any aside from Peter. Maybe there was an expiration date on this thing, and if he didn’t get resurrected soon, he was dead forever.

Worse, maybe he would stay like this forever. Never resurrected, never truly dead. Just stuck in this middle-place limbo with nothing to do forever and ever until he went insane. He’d become some nutty poltergeist terrorizing children because at least that was a change of pace.

That night, he went to the cellar. He looked at it with new eyes. The indecipherable markings on the little table were now a clue waiting to be solved. He scoured the space for other hints about the place. Maybe it had belonged to an aunt of Peter’s, but she’d been a werewolf. Stiles inspected the wall on the end of the room, where he’d noticed a split in the wood and never bothered to examine it. Passing through, he found a network of tunnels that seemed to sprawl through the whole town. He found one that ended in a room with dusty jars and boxes. It was under the high school, of all places.

Stiles opted against exploring the whole tunnel system in one night. That sort of excitement should be meted out over days. He returned to the books and read through the few they hadn’t gotten to, hoping that Peter would show up. After a few hours, Stiles went to the diner and watched the sleepy waitress and the sleepy cook and the shaky old man that spent most of his nights there. Stiles thought he was homeless, probably. He paid in change and nursed his coffees slowly through the night.

Just before sunrise, Peter slid into the other side of the booth. He looked much like he had when they met in life: early thirties, leather jacket, a smile somewhere between amusement and cruelty. Stiles hadn’t heard him come in, but he forced himself not to react to the sudden appearance.

Stiles stared at Peter, hating how desperately he wanted to touch his hand, if only to have contact with someone else. Seeing his adult face again felt jarring and stirred up those painful memories of death, but the intense relief at being _looked at_ nearly balanced the bad feelings out.

“You were in the cellar,” Peter remarked.

“I found the tunnels,” Stiles told him evenly.

Peter raised an eyebrow, and it was the same surprised-and-impressed look he’d been giving Stiles in his younger disguise. “They lead back to the Hale house,” he said.

Stiles sort of felt like Peter had just given away the ending to a good book. He wanted to kick him, but resisted the urge and just glared at him. Stiles needed a change of subject, and it didn’t take long to land on one. “Do you feel sorry at all that you killed me or was that just part of the act?”

Rolling his eyes, Peter slumped back in his seat. His foot bumped against Stiles’s under the table, and Stiles had to force himself to pull his foot back rather than push into the touch. “Like I said before, it’s not like I murdered you. I told you the risks, and you accepted them.”

“You hid my body and my truck so no one would know I was dead,” Stiles snapped.

“What am I going to do, leave you out for some medical examiner to get his hands on?” Peter sighed. “It’s not like you died of natural causes, Stiles. Your blood turned to sludge in your veins.”

If he’d had a stomach, Stiles would have felt sick at that description. “So you don’t feel guilty at all?” he pressed.

Peter waved a careless hand at him. “I’m sorry you’re dead, if that’s what you’re after. Not that it would have mattered much with the way my night went, but you would have been a good beta. An asset to the pack. Much better than your idiot friend.”

“You’re a fucking narcissist,” Stiles accused, huffing a disbelieving laugh.

“I’m a realist,” Peter argued. “I’m practical and, no, I’m not sentimental. I won’t apologize for that. It’s a vicious world out there, Stiles, and letting emotion cloud your judgment is a good way to get torn to pieces. If it’s that important to you, fine, I am sorry you’re dead. It was a waste of a clever mind and a plucky sort of courage that I find almost as endearing as it is annoying. I’m sorry that your father is going through what he is and that you have to watch it happen. I’m no proponent of suffering for suffering’s sake, and that situation is purposeless and unfortunate.”

Peter’s take on things didn’t exactly give Stiles the warm fuzzies. If anything, hearing him spell out his grief as both horrible and purposeless made it ache even worse. His eyes burned with unshed tears. God damn it, Stiles needed a fucking hug and the only person he could get it from was Peter.

He stood from the booth, rubbing a hand over his hair and shaking his head. “I can’t do this,” he huffed. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I can’t fucking look at you.” Stiles could have vanished from the diner, but instead he just walked out through the wall into the parking lot and fell into a crouch, arms wrapped around his knees.

“I know you were scared,” Peter said, behind him. Stiles refused to look up at him. “When you were dying. I could smell it. I tried to lie to you, to tell you it was going to be okay, but you were too smart to believe me. I’m sorry I couldn’t take your fear away.”

Stiles’s throat felt tight. He didn’t want to cry in front of Peter.

“If it’s any consolation, I know what it feels like. Dying, in pain, afraid. In the fire that killed my family, I thought for sure I would die. Then again, when your friends burned me alive. It was like experiencing it all over again.” His voice was softer than Stiles had heard it in this adult tone.

“Are you asking me to feel sorry for you or something?” he asked, voice a little more choked than he wanted it to sound. He did feel a little sorry, imagining what that must have been like, to relive one’s death and die a second time.

“No,” Peter said. “I’m just saying that I understand what that was like for you, and I’m sorry it happened that way. I’m sorry you were scared and in pain.”

For a moment, Stiles thought he believed Peter. Then he remembered his words before he closed the trunk of the Jeep. _It’s done_. Stiles stood and turned to face Peter, jaw clenched. “You’re such a fucking liar,” he snapped, stepping in closer, crowding into Peter’s space. “You left me alone! You let me die alone!” He shoved at Peter’s chest.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Peter said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not!” Stiles yelled, shoving again. Peter took a half-step backward, and Stiles just crowded forward again. “You’re a fucking liar!” Another shove, another step.

With his back to the wall of the diner, Peter stared at Stiles with a controlled sort of expression. “I am,” he insisted. “I’m sorry you were alone when it happened.”

Tears burned at Stiles’s eyes, but he fought to hold them back, blinking fast. “I wish I was there when they did it,” he said, voice cracking. He wanted so badly to hurt Peter the way he’d been hurt, to hear proof that Peter had suffered, too. “I wish I could have helped them burn you.”

Peter stared at him, studying Stiles’s face. “No, you don’t,” he said quietly.

“You don’t know that,” Stiles argued. “You can’t hear me lie. I don’t have a heart anymore.”

A hand cupped his cheek warm and solid, and Stiles didn’t have it in him to shrug it off. “You do, though,” Peter said, nearly a whisper. “All of that anger, that pain, and I still don’t think you have it in you to be cruel.” He was staring at Stiles like he was something miraculous, and it warmed him in a way he couldn’t help but want.

Stiles shoved Peter’s hand away, but weakly. “Shut up,” he pleaded.

Peter dove forward and kissed him, and Stiles felt warm from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, the thrill of it overflowing from his chest. It wasn’t rough or possessive, like Stiles would have imagined Peter would kiss. It felt much like the kiss with his younger mask had. Sweet and firm, a little desperate.

Before he could question himself, Stiles felt himself stumbling forward, parting his lips and wrapping his arms around Peter’s neck, tangling his fingers in the hair at the base of his skull. Peter’s tongue slipped against his, but gently, like he could hardly believe he was allowed. His hands settled on the small of Stiles’s back, pulling him in closer as Stiles sighed into the kiss.

It took a long time for Stiles’s thoughts to catch up with him. Instead of punching, this time, he slowly pushed himself back, hands sliding down flat on Peter’s chest. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “I can’t do this.” There was no way in hell he could let himself fall into something like this with a man like Peter.

Before his eyes, Peter shifted into his younger form. “If I looked like this?” Peter asked.

Stiles huffed a laugh and stepped back, rubbing a hand over his hair. It should have been ridiculous, how far down age sat on the list of things wrong with this. Peter was probably twice his age. He stared out across the parking lot. The sun had started to ease up over the tops of the trees in the distance. Stiles turned back to look at Peter, the cool light of morning catching in his blue eyes. “Can you turn into someone that didn’t kill me?” he asked, voice brittle.

In an instant, Stiles was back in his bedroom. He curled up on his bed and finally let himself cry.


	4. Abstruse Cryptogram

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Stiles form a tentative truce.

The following night found Stiles, yet again, sitting in his bedroom and feeling sorry for himself.

Melissa had come by their house that afternoon with a casserole and a gentle tone of voice. She and his dad talked about this ‘werewolf stuff’ their kids were mixed up in, and then she asked about the search. The conversation stretched on long until his dad seemed to soften and crumble like an old, flood-worn wall. Hunched forward, elbows on his knees, he asked the question aloud for the first time:

“ _What if he’s dead?”_

After that, Stiles couldn’t bring himself to even go out and try to find something to occupy his time. He just lay on his bed, one arm curled under his head and the other hugging his knees, and stared at the wall of his bedroom.

“God, isn’t this a sorry sight?” Peter’s voice came from behind him, and Stiles startled, sitting up and whipping around to see him. He was in his adult appearance again, though he was in a slate gray v-neck and jeans rather than the leather jacket Stiles was used to seeing him in.

“How did you find me here?” Stiles demanded. ‘Pete’ had never been invited to his house.

Peter rolled his eyes. “Your father is the sheriff, Stiles. I’ve known where you lived since we were both breathing. Now, stop moping and get out of bed. We’ve got work to do.”

Stiles felt himself tense up, not emotionally steady enough to have this argument with Peter all over again, not after the day he’d had. “Peter, I told you...” he began with a sigh.

“I’m not here to make out with you, Stiles,” Peter snapped, impatient. He took a few steps toward Stiles, then, seeing the way Stiles started to scoot back on the bed, stopped and took a step back again. “Believe it or not, there are more pressing matters to attend to than whether or not you hate me.”

“Like what? Like you need me to get into Deaton’s room?” Stiles shot back, already wary of Peter’s underhanded tactics.

Peter tilted his head to the side, studying Stiles with a smirk. “I know what the Flooded Moon is.” He said it like it was a gift to Stiles, deftly avoiding the question.

“So you _don’t_ need me to go into Deaton’s office?” he pressed.

“It would help,” Peter said slowly, as if it pained him to admit. “Given my ingenuity, I like to think I would figure out a way regardless, but time is of the essence here.”

Stiles leaned back on his hands, legs dangling over the edge of his bed. “Why should I even trust you enough to work with you? You could use me to get the information, then resurrect yourself and leave me behind.”

“I could,” Peter agreed. “It would probably be a smart idea, too, given your attitude toward me. The others might give me a pass on returning to the living, but you would undoubtedly dog me from the moment I returned to my body and wouldn’t stop until I was in the ground again.”

Not about to argue with that, Stiles shrugged a shoulder and nodded.

“But,” Peter continued, “I have thought about our little talk. While I stand by my earlier point that I did not actually _murder_ you – I had every expectation that the bite would take – I am willing to concede that I have responsibility for your death. As your alpha.”

The word felt weird, such an odd fit for two people as detached from lycanthropy and any sort of power as the two of them. Stiles didn’t argue, though, just lifted an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes.” The word came out terse, grudging, but honest. “And as a _responsible_ party, I’ve decided that I am going to drag you back into the world of the living, kicking and screaming if necessary. I am going to get you resurrected if it kills me.” Peter flashed a cheeky smile at that last comment.

Stiles rolled his eyes at the joke, but if he’d had a heart, it would have been hammering out a mad beat in his chest. Peter was a snake and a liar and a murderer, regardless of how one counted Stiles’s death. But he was also whip-smart, crafty, capable, and more knowledgeable about the supernatural than anyone else Stiles knew.

If anyone could bring him back to life, it was Peter.

“Fine,” Stiles said. “But first, you need to get the fuck out of my house. This is my space.”

* * *

“Pawn to c4,” Stiles said before Peter had even finished settling on his side of the booth. The uncertain look on Peter’s face had Stiles sitting up a little straighter with confidence.

“Really?” Peter asked, raising an eyebrow.

Stiles crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the booth. “I lost last night because I was distracted. I want a rematch.”

“I meant, ‘Really, you’re using the English Opening?’” Peter clarified, settling in his seat. He drummed his fingers on the table soundlessly and hummed. “Pawn to c6.”

“Tell me about the Flooded Moon,” Stiles said. They tended to not mix conversation with games, given the concentration it took to keep track of the pieces in their heads, but he was determined to keep the upper hand, keep Peter on-edge.

Peter, again, had to take a moment to recalibrate to Stiles’s line of conversation. “The story we found was of Celtic origin,” he explained. “An Old Irish word for ‘spring’ was ‘robarta,’ which also means ‘flood-tide.’ Spring was the flooding time.”

That didn’t seem too terrible timeline-wise. It was still February, after all. “Knight to f3,” he said.

Frowning, Peter tilted his head to the side. The English Opening was flexible, unpredictable in a way that most standard openings weren’t. “Pawn to d5. Now, at first glance, it could seem like any spring full moon would do, but there are other mythologies to consider. In a few Native American traditions, there is a moon referred to as the ‘Worm Moon,’ which is specifically a time of resurrection, the time that the worms rise from the dirt after being frozen for the winter, when the dormant trees begin to bud and come back to life. It needs extra digging, but my concern is that the March full moon, the Worm Moon, is when this ritual needs to happen.”

Stiles’s eyebrows shot up. Shit. That only gave them a month and a half, and they didn’t even know how long it would take Lydia to wake up. He scrambled to think through his chess move first, having been distracted by Peter’s explanation. “Knight – no! Um, pawn to g3,” he said, cursing himself for getting flustered, doubly so when Peter smirked at him.

“Are you sure you want to be playing two games at once here, Stiles? We could always put one on hold.” He said it like he was being understanding, charitable even, but Stiles could read the mockery underneath it.

“Shut up.”

“Have it your way. Knight to f6.”

“So what do we need to figure out before the full moon?” Stiles asked.

“For starters, whether March is the correct moon in the first place.”

“I mean, a resurrection moon seems like a pretty safe guess.”

Peter smiled at him, that smarmy, cocky smile that said he knew oh-so-much more than Stiles. “I never guess,” he said sagely. “It is a shocking habit – destructive to the logical faculty.”

“What, did you read that in a fortune cookie or something?” Stiles shot back. “Bishop to g2.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” Peter explained. “That other quote I gave you, too, when we were talking about your father yesterday. I remembered after you left.”

“You don’t get to talk about my father anymore,” Stiles snapped.

“Pawn to e6,” Peter sighed, as if this was all very tiring to him now. Stiles wanted to kick him.

“So, what, you’re a Sherlock fanatic or something?”

Peter gazed off the end of the table, a soft look in his eyes, and for a moment Stiles didn’t think he’d answer. Then, slowly, he said, “Someone read the books to me while I was in the coma. I don’t remember who.”

Stiles didn’t really know what to say to that, but Peter looked up at him and saved him the dilemma.

“You know, a lot of what I lied to you about before, about being a ghost for so long, playing these chess games in my head – they weren’t exactly lies. I was in the coma for six years, but I was conscious in my own way. It was a lot like being a ghost.”

“The astral projection book we read,” Stiles supplied immediately.

Peter nodded. “Just like that. I was familiar with the concept before the fire, but I stumbled on how to do it more or less by accident. I was less coherent than I am now, more instinct-driven, but I remember everything.”

Stiles wanted to know if he remembered the pain of the burns, if he’d been awake for all of that, but it felt cruel to ask.

“It’s your move, Stiles,” Peter said.

It took him a minute to replay the moves in his head and remember where everything was at. Stiles closed his eyes and frowned. Peter was baiting him with the pawn, and he wasn’t going to bite. “Pawn to d4.” Neither of them had gone for particularly traditional plays, and they were quickly progressing into uncharted territory.

“I don’t think I was truly coherent until I died,” Peter admitted. “I was out of my mind when I killed Laura. The alpha spark was enough to heal me, but the sudden rage and instinct of the alpha powers pushed me into another sort of frenzy entirely.”

Stiles recognized the play for sympathy and found it almost laughable, that Peter would seek reassurance while talking about the murder of his own niece. “That’s bullshit,” Stiles said simply. “Take your turn.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Peter argued, frowning.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You were coherent when you were taking Scott’s mom out to fuck with him.”

“That was -”

“You were coherent when you managed to convince Derek to join up with you,” Stiles continued. “I still have no idea how you managed that beyond Derek just being majorly fucking damaged. Did you give him this whole song and dance? About how you were out of your mind until this very situation here, where I need you to trust me? Everything you did before has to be excused as insanity, but now? Now you’re perfectly trustworthy and stable.”

Peter’s jaw clenched, and Stiles imagined his eyes would be bleeding red, claws would be slipping if he were still alive. “Is that what you think of me, then?” he asked, voice carefully even.

“I think you’re a conman,” Stiles said, waving a hand. “Worse, I’m starting to think you’re buying into your own bullshit. Now take your turn.”

“Bishop to e7,” Peter snapped.

Stiles grinned. “Are you pissed because you _are_ buying into your own bullshit or because you’re not, but you can’t defend yourself without admitting you’re a bullshitter?”

“You’re exceptionally irritating.”

“Are you sure you want to bring me back to life?”

“Maybe I’ll resurrect you to inflict you on those that betrayed me, then continue to my final resting place to spare myself further exposure,” Peter replied drolly.

“Castle,” Stiles said.

“Castle,” Peter echoed with a smirk. They had both moved their kings toward the corners, opening the board for a more aggressive confrontation.

“So first thing’s first, I guess,” Stiles said. “You need me to get back into Deaton’s back room.”

“Don’t act like you’re holding it over my head,” Peter sniffed. “You need me for the Latin. We’re in this together, like it or not.”

“For the record, it’s ‘not,’” Stiles assured him. “But fine. Queen to c2.”

* * *

They got through the rest of the book that night in the same excruciating manner that had gotten them through the first part of it, Stiles stumbling his way through shitty Latin pronunciations and Peter ordering him around until he was able to make sense of it. They checked a few other books, but Peter huffed a sigh before too long and called him out of the room.

“All Deaton is going to have is Celtic crap,” he lamented. “We need something more holistic.”

Stiles emerged from the room with a raised eyebrow. “Hey, this crap is the best lead we have,” he reminded Peter. Looking around the veterinary clinic, Stiles had to wonder how often Deaton even went into the utility room. It had been days and the books were in the exact places he’d left them. “What’s his deal anyway?”

Peter wandered toward the door to the kennel, resulting in a few hisses from the cats nearest the door. “He’s a Druid,” he explained. “Or he was. It seems he’s not as involved in that world anymore.”

“So, what, you knew him back in the day?” Stiles pressed.

“How about we get back to the cellar and get to work?” Peter suggested, ignoring the question. “In case you had forgotten, we have a potential deadline hanging over our heads.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, and in a second he was in the cellar, wandering down toward the bookshelves. “So what are we looking for now? _Holistic Magic for Dummies_?”

“More or less,” Peter agreed. He stepped right up next to Stiles so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, and Stiles shuffled away with a scowl. If Peter noticed, he didn’t comment. “There was a book in this collection about basic principles of magical energy. It had a whole section on moon and alpha energy.” He leaned forward, frowning at the spines of the books remaining on the shelves, as if his disapproval would make them less dusty.

“We might just need to knock them all out,” Stiles offered.

Peter looked over at him with a curious smile. “If I piss you off again, do you think you could get them in one go?”

* * *

The book Peter had been looking for was in Early Middle English, handwritten with old spellings and odd turns of phrase. After trying to parse through it for a few pages, Stiles shook his head and told Peter to work on it alone and tell him when he found something important. He turned his attention to a book that discussed banshee abilities.

Banshees, it turned out, didn’t scream for just anyone. Lydia had screamed for Stiles because they had a personal connection, which suggested that her working a resurrection would work for the same reason. He wondered if Peter biting her had created a close enough connection for her powers to work on him. He suspected that had been the idea behind biting her in the first place.

Stiles was about to confront him with that question when he heard Peter hum. He sat cross-legged in front of his tome, lips pinched thoughtfully as he tipped his head to the side.

“Did you find the bit about lunar energies?” Stiles supposed.

“No,” Peter said slowly, eyes still scanning over the page, “but I might have a lead on you.”

That caught Stiles’s attention. He turned to read over Peter’s shoulder. The section under his scrutiny was headed: _Magik_ _habilite en_ _humain linage_

“Is this, like, witches or something?” Stiles asked.

Peter shook his head and tapped his finger on a section on the next page. ‘ _A p_ _a_ _rson_ _other-wise elles humain en natour wo possesse_ _th_ _ane habilite ofe magik_ _instinctif en natour...’_

Stiles felt himself going a little cross-eyed reading it. “Translation?”

“A spark,” Peter said. “It’s a name for a person, otherwise human, who has a natural propensity for magic. Essentially, a spark is naturally charged with magical energy waiting for some trigger to manifest itself. So, say, if you had two out of the three necessary elements to become a ghost and all you needed was a little jolt of magic to seal the deal...”

“The spark would create the magical energy needed,” Stiles finished. He frowned. “I mean, I’ve never done anything magic before. Wouldn’t I have noticed?”

Peter looked up and gave him the sarcastic eyebrow. Stiles hated that eyebrow. “Your life until recently has hardly been remarkable enough to warrant magical interference. It took facing your own death to create a situation severe enough to conjure your innate magic abilities, and now that you’re a ghost, you’re just a mess of magic surprises.”

Stiles frowned at the book, not sure what to make of that. He’d probably end up having to read that Old English crap if he didn’t want to rely on Peter’s word. He decided for a change of topic. “I figured out why you bit Lydia.” Stiles made the accusation with more confidence in his theory than his hunch warranted, but the payoff for catching Peter off-guard was worth a gamble.

“Do tell,” Peter drawled, turning to face Stiles with a skeptical expression.

“You needed to form a connection with her so her banshee powers would work on you.”

Peter shook his head, amused. “You’re overthinking it. Her powers were latent before I bit her – how was I to know what she was? Besides, I didn’t know I was going to need to be resurrected.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes at Peter. “So you just happened to bite a banshee, total coincidence, right before you went into a fight that killed you?” The call of ‘bullshit’ went unspoken.

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent,” Peter replied coolly.

“More Sherlock?”

“Mm,” he agreed, turning to his book.

“You know, you’re a pretty terrible liar,” Stiles informed him.

Peter looked back over at him, an eyebrow raised. He hesitated, then said, “I haven’t met many people of that opinion. Go on, though. What’s my tell?”

Stiles shook his head. “You don’t have a tell. It’s the pattern of it. The first time you tell something, it’s always a lie. Then when you’re caught, you give up a little bit of the truth but hold back the important part. You don’t tell the whole truth until the person you’re lying to already knows it.”

As much as he hated Peter, Stiles loved it when the man looked impressed with him.

“So what’s the partial truth on Lydia, then?” Stiles pressed.

Peter leaned back, stretching his legs out long in front of him and propping himself up on his hands. “Well, if I were to follow your pattern, I would tell you that you’re right, that I created a bond with a banshee as insurance in case I was killed.”

“So then what’s the whole story?”

“Aren’t I supposed to wait until you already know?”

Stiles waved a hand at the book. “I’ll get it eventually. Come on.”

With a smirk, Peter crossed his ankles and grinned at Stiles. “Like I said, her powers were latent. The bite kick-started them, so to speak. Regardless of whether or not I was killed, bringing a banshee into the playing field would be an advantage to me, since I would be the only one who knew what she was. Including Lydia.”

“And you were willing to risk her life just for an advantage,” Stiles huffed. “You better hope she wakes up.”

Peter frowned. “Well, based on your pattern, you won’t believe me,” he said, “but I didn’t know she would react that badly. I’m not sure why she’s in such a bad state.”

Stiles stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

* * *

They split up again shortly after dawn. Stiles went to the station first, where his dad was reviewing shift schedules with Tara, one of his deputies. He had a mostly-empty cup of coffee and dark circles under his eyes. “Really, Tara, it’s not like these things take forever. I can keep up with scheduling.”

Tara fixed him with a stern look, one that Stiles recognized. When he was younger and his dad had to bring him to the station, Tara would help him with his math homework. She had given him that look more times than he could count. “No one thinks any less of you for being a mess right now,” she told his dad, “but things are slipping around here. You need to delegate.”

His dad sighed and nodded. “I know.”

“You’ve got family right here, Noah. You let us pull the weight. We’ve got you.”

Stiles wanted so badly to hug her. Instead, he wrapped his arms around himself and closed his eyes, just thinking at her as hard as he could. “Thank you, Tara. Oh my god, thank you.”

* * *

His next stop was the hospital, where Stiles was shocked to find Lydia sitting up and talking. Her mom sat behind her on the bed, carefully pulling a comb through her hair. “Honestly, it wasn’t like you were moving around. How did it get so matted?” her mom complained with a smile.

“Use more conditioner,” Lydia urged. “If you rip my hair, I’m going to freak out.”

Stiles stepped forward until he was standing right in front of Lydia. “Can you hear me?” he asked, “or was that just a coma thing?”

“Ow! Mom!” Lydia yelped.

* * *

At school, Stiles stood in the hallway, off to the side to avoid being walked through. He had tried not to think too much about how life had gone on without him. For most of his classmates, his disappearance hadn’t changed life at all. There had been some idle gossip at first, but today it all seemed focused on Allison and Kate Argent’s upcoming funeral.

“We have a problem.” Peter’s voice came from directly behind him, and Stiles yelped, spinning around.

“Is that really necessary?” Stiles demanded. “You’re creepy enough without the lurking and sneaking.”

Peter sighed and tapped two fingers against Stiles’s jaw. “Focus, sweetheart.” Stiles jerked his head back, swatting at Peter’s hand. “As I said, we have a problem.”

“And what’s that?”

Peter wrapped a hand around Stiles’s elbow and tugged him through a wall of lockers and into an empty staff room. “More of a ‘who’ than a ‘what,’” he explained. Peter released Stiles’s elbow once they were in the room, moving to lean against a desk. “His name is Gerard. Argent.”

“Another Argent? I mean, the funeral is today. There’s probably a lot of them in town”

“This one came with a hunting party at his back,” Peter explained. “Gerard doesn’t fuck around, and Kate was his daughter. He’s going to be out for blood.”

Stiles rubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck. Scott. Allison’s dad promised not to kill him, but… _fuck_.” He frowned, then looked up at Peter. “I get how this is a problem for me, what with the caring about other people and shit,” he said. “Why the hell do you care?”

Peter feigned an injured expression, placing a hand delicately to his chest. “Why, Stiles. I care because you care,” he mocked. Then he rolled his eyes. “Who do you think is going to be top on their list of targets, you idiot?”

“What, Derek? Scott? Those are our only furry friends in town.”

“And what about those they might _think_ are werewolves?” Peter pressed.

“Oh shit,” Stiles breathed. “Lydia.”

“Right now, that coma is the only thing keeping a target off her back.”

Stiles’s eyes went wide. “About that...” Peter lifted an eyebrow, and Stiles swallowed heavily. “She’s awake. She’s still in the hospital, but she’s up and talking.”

“Fuck,” Peter muttered. He closed his eyes and blew out a slow breath. His head tilted to the side, and Stiles realized that he looked the same way when he was working out a difficult chess move. After a few minutes of tense silence, Peter opened his eyes again and fixed them on Stiles. “I have a plan, but I need you to do exactly as I say. We don’t have time for the self-pitying bullshit. Do you understand?”

His first instinct was to put up a fight over Peter framing _mourning his own death_ as ‘bullshit,’ but Stiles bit his tongue. If it meant protecting Lydia, he could swallow his pride. “Yes.”

* * *

Their first stop was in one of the tunnels that lead from the Hale house and ran through the city. They had to run because Stiles had never been to their destination before.

“Any chance you’re going to share this master plan with me?” Stiles asked, keeping pace beside Peter easily. If he’d been able to run like this while he was alive, he would have been a star athlete.

“Essentially, we need to draw attention away from Lydia,” Peter explained. “The Argents need a more pressing threat to deal with. Since we don’t want to send them after Derek or Scott either, that leaves us one more potential werewolf to aim them at – someone they can’t kill.” He looked over at Stiles, smug.

“Wait, you mean me?” Stiles squawked. “Why would they -”

Peter cut him off, huffing impatiently. “Think about it, Stiles. The Argents see Scott and Derek as potential threats, but they’re _known_ threats. Hunters like to know the playing field before they make their move, so an unknown threat is of greater interest to them than a known one.”

“Lydia is an unknown threat,” Stiles summarized, “but so am I.”

“For all they know, I bit you before I died, you survived the bite, and you’re off somewhere with no alpha, rabid and ready to kill. They know nothing about your situation. At the very least, they know where Lydia is.”

Peter slowed as they approached what looked like a metal garage door. They walked through it and into a small, dank cellar. The walls were lined with shelves, packed full of glass jars.

“Where are we?” asked Stiles.

Striding along the shelves, Peter squinted at the dusty labels. “Under an old distillery on the edge of town,” he explained. “My family used to own it. We stored herbs and spell ingredients here.”

Stiles inspected the jars closest to the doors. Most held hazy-colored liquids or brown powders. There was one full of chicken feet. “So we’re going to do a spell? How?”

“Very carefully.” Peter had stopped in the middle of the shelf on the far wall. He blew out a breath and started to pull his hand through one of the jars. It didn’t move the first time, but the second, Stiles heard it scoot just a little.

“Do you want me to try?” he offered.

Peter shook his head. “You would be a bull in a china shop. We only want this one. Now shut up.” He pulled his hand through again and again. Stiles kept his mouth shut, shifting from foot to foot impatiently until, finally, the jar tipped forward off the shelf and crashed open on the floor. Dark powder scattered in all directions.

“What is it?” Stiles asked.

“An invitation, if you use it right,” Peter explained, staring down at the powder. “It will make the territory seem more inviting. We lure in a rogue werewolf, an omega without a pack. They’re vicious things, no control, desperate for an alpha and a pack to ground them again.”

“Wait, you’re intentionally drawing a dangerous werewolf into Beacon Hills?” Stiles demanded. “What if it kills someone!”

Peter looked over his shoulder at Stiles. “Do you want to keep Lydia safe? Do you want to be resurrected?”

Stiles opened his mouth to insist that he didn’t want to do it if it meant someone else might get hurt. Then he thought about the circles under his dad’s eyes. He imagined the hunters killing Lydia in her hospital bed. He shut his mouth.

“Good. Now you need to give me a boost up to that lantern,” Peter said, gesturing to an oil lantern on the top shelf, above where the powder had spilled.

Stiles stared at him for a moment, waiting for the punchline. “A boost? Seriously?”

“Yes, up on your shoulders,” Peter insisted, waving an impatient hand at him. “You can lift me just fine – it’s not like either of us weigh anything right now.”

“And you can’t, like, just float up?” The prospect of that much bodily contact with Peter had him wary. Not because he thought Peter was using this to take advantage, per se – though that was totally a manipulative thing he would do – but more because Stiles had become very aware of his touch starvation during the few days he exiled himself from Peter. However much he hated the man, being touched was way, way too good.

“As much as I appreciate your inquisitive nature, Stiles,” Peter gritted out, “I already told you we don’t have time for you to be questioning every little thing. Now _get over here_.”

Huffing, Stiles appeared by Peter’s side and crouched down, hands ready to hold Peter’s legs as he swung them over Stiles’s shoulders. Peter’s thighs, metaphysical or no, were strong and firm under his grip. Stiles stood slowly, finding that it took hardly any effort at all.

“Step forward,” Peter instructed, reaching forward toward the shelf. Stiles did as he was told and looked up, watching as Peter placed his thumb and forefinger around the knob of the lantern. His other hand stayed braced on the top of Stiles’s head, the touch soft.

Slowly, carefully, Peter began to twitch his fingers through the knob. It took a long time, twisting the knob bit by bit in tiny, focused motions. It gave Stiles far too much time to focus on the feel of Peter’s muscles under his hands, wrapped around his neck. The press of his groin and abdomen against the back of Stiles’s head, the way his fingers twitched just slightly in Stiles’s hair. The way his ankles gripped around the sides of Stiles’s ribs.

He thought about that stupid kiss, the last one that went on way too long, and it took every ounce of self-control Stiles had to not drop Peter and run.

Finally, the lantern hissed and sprang to life, a flame curling upward behind the dusty glass. Peter didn’t climb down, just appeared on the other side of the room, farther away than Stiles had expected. He looked more worn out than Stiles had seen him.

“The next part is for you,” he said. “You need to knock the lantern into the powder.”

Stiles almost asked why it had to be him, then remembered the reprimand he’d just gotten for asking too many questions. He nodded and climbed to the top of the shelf. Stiles tried to focus on anger or grief or any of the things he’d used before. Instead, he found himself thinking about how it felt to touch another person, how badly he wanted that again.

The lantern went crashing to the ground, the flame erupting through the rising dust, then settling and smoldering across the powder Peter had spilled.

* * *

They found an omega in the preserve in a ratty green jacket, hair long and dirty. He stood, shifting anxiously from foot to foot, sniffing the air. He twitched forward, then stopped, then backed up and sniffed the air again.

“What’s he doing?” Stiles asked.

“Feeling out the boundary of the territory,” Peter explained. He watched the omega curiously, no hint of sympathy for the pathetic state the man was in. “He wants to come in, but he doesn’t want to violate the boundary. We’ll have to make it easier for him.”

Before Stiles could ask how, Peter took Stiles’s hand in his own, holding it firm. “Close your eyes,” he instructed. “I want you to imagine the energy that ties the land to the alpha, to Derek. Picture it as a sort of haze filling the space in, like smoke in a soap bubble.”

Stiles focused on the rumble of Peter’s words, letting the image fill his mind. He could see, in his mind, the place where the smoke bumped against the boundary as if it had hit a solid wall. “Okay.”

“We’re going to push the boundary out,” Peter told him, “the same way we pushed the books. We’re as solid to that boundary as we were to the books. It’s all about intent. Think about the movement, the energy, the solidness. Do you have that?”

He pictured the way the edge of the soap bubble would bulge out as they pushed on it. “I got it,” he agreed.

“Now I want you to think about how much you hate me.” Peter said it calmly, like it meant nothing to him, and it caught Stiles by surprise. He almost opened his eyes, but Peter quickly squeezed his hand in reprimand. “Focus, Stiles. Do you really want to be holding hands with the man that killed you? You hate me. You’re standing here because of me. Now focus. Do you have it?”

It took a moment to get his thoughts in order, to follow along, but Stiles blew out a slow breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“Together, then,” Peter said.

They ran at the boundary, eyes still closed, hands still clutched together. When they burst through it, Stiles could actually feel a rush of sensation for a bright, cold moment. The feeling of the boundary rupturing outward.

Stiles stumbled to a stop and opened his eyes. Ahead of him, the preserve stretched on as it had before. No smoke, no boundary. He looked over his shoulder and saw the omega sprinting through the preserve, into the territory.

“Sorry,” Peter said, and started to pull his hand back.

Before Stiles could second-guess himself, he squeezed Peter’s hand tighter, holding on. “Wait. It’s...” He frowned and blushed. “It’s okay.” He held on and turned back through the preserve. They could have vanished themselves to their next destination, but neither suggested it.

“It’s a bit disorienting,” Peter said after a long while. The sun had started to slant low through the trees. “Not being able to touch anything. I can walk on the ground, orient myself by it, but I can’t make a footprint. It’s touching me, but I’m not touching it.”

Stiles felt Peter’s hand shift in his own, and he knew the man was trying to talk about this.

Peter offered him a smile without an inch of pleasure behind it. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be anything but this.” He nodded to their hands. “It can just be a touch.”

* * *

That night, the omega dug up a fresh corpse and ate its liver.

Stiles and Peter sat on the floor of the Argents’ dining room, where a small hunting party had gathered to discuss the situation. Peter had his back to the bookshelf, legs sprawled out in front of him, and Stiles sat between his legs, back to Peter’s chest, both hands tangled together.

“Our man had eyes on the hospital all night,” Chris said, hands pressed to the surface of the dining table, a map of Beacon Hills spread in front of him. “She never left. It has to be Stilinski.”

“He’ll be feral,” Gerard said from the head of the table. “Barely more than an animal.”

Mrs. Argent entered from the kitchen, a tray of coffee cups in her hand. She set it on the table. “Then you’ll hunt him like one,” she said.

“They’re going to kill that omega,” Stiles realized quietly. They hadn’t talked about it explicitly during their plan, but it had been an obvious facet. To keep the Argents from killing Lydia, they were offering up the omega instead.

Peter squeezed his arms around Stiles’s middle. “Try not to think about it. We didn’t have many moves to make here.” Stiles watched as the hunters passed around their coffee and started assigning people to areas of town. “They were going to kill someone in any case,” Peter told him. “That’s on them.”


	5. Infinitely Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia wakes from her coma.

Two days later, Stiles and Peter sat curled up in their usual booth. The Cuddle Truce, as Stiles liked to call it, had become the new normal faster than he would have expected. Sometimes he thought Peter needed it even more than he did.

“I miss waffles,” Stiles sighed, gazing longingly at the stack in front of the customer at the counter.

“I miss coffee,” Peter murmured. 

Stiles squirmed around so he was facing Peter, which left them just about chest-to-chest, faces too close. He didn’t pull back, though. “Alright, new truce,” he declared. “As soon as we’re resurrected, no matter what happens, we come back here as soon as we can and get all the breakfast food we can eat.”

Peter grinned, and his eyes flitted down to Stiles’s mouth. For a moment, Stiles worried that Peter would try to kiss him again, which was _not_ part of the Cuddle Truce. Instead, he simply said, “Deal.”

Stiles shifted back around. Peter’s arm rested along the back of the booth around Stiles’s shoulders. Stiles settled his head against Peter’s bicep. “I’m still a little worried that Lydia couldn’t hear me in the hospital before,” Stiles added.

Peter rubbed a hand over Stiles’s hair lightly. “She was interacting with a living person at the time. That’s understandable. We just need to make sure she stays receptive to her new senses. As long as she doesn’t tune out completely, we’ll be fine.”

They talked through some of the other details, what they would need Lydia to prepare, contingency plans for Argent interventions. The hunters were out once again that night, searching for the omega.

Once they ran out of planning, they slipped effortlessly into a chess game, playing out a familiar opening that would leave them evenly matched once they hit off-book moves.

Stiles was about to take out one of Peter’s knights when a scream ripped through the diner.

Rather, the scream ripped through _them_. The other occupants of the diner seemed not to hear it at all, while Stiles lurched forward, trembling as it rattled his whole being. It hurt in a way he couldn’t describe, had no reference point to compare it to. He looked behind him at Peter, who seemed to fuzz out around the edges, like he was fading out of existence. Stiles’s eyes went wide, and he lunged back for him, wrapping his arms around Peter to try to keep him grounded, keep him on this plane.

When the scream finally stopped, they were both shaking, clinging to one another. “What the fuck was that?” Stiles gasped, sitting up and running a hand over his hair. “Lydia?”

“Hospital,” Peter bit out. “Now.”

They both appeared directly in her room, where hospital security guards were hustling between the room and the adjoining bathroom. Mrs. McCall stood by the foot of the hospital bed, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “I mean she’s just gone, Noah,” she was saying. “She was in the shower, and she just took off through the window, _naked_.”

* * *

  
  


The police tracked Lydia’s footprints across the lawn outside the hospital, but lost the trail once she hit the road. Stiles and Peter stood in the middle of the street, listening in while Stiles’s dad organized a preliminary search party. Stiles had both hands gripped on the back of his neck, elbows forward. Beside him, Peter had shoved his hands into his pockets and growled with frustration.

“If I was alive, I could find her in a second,” he complained. “No chance anyone is going to bother alerting Scott or Derek and get a werewolf nose on the trail?”

“Maybe Jackson,” Stiles allowed, “but he hasn’t been to the hospital much.”

“Fuck.”

Stiles dropped his arms and turned to face Peter. “The hunting party is out there _right now_. If they find her, are they going to kill her?”

Peter’s lip curled the way it often did when discussing the Argents. “Let’s not find out.”

That was how they found themselves scouring the preserve, one of the few places Lydia could have gotten to from the hospital without being spotted. The police had found another trail of footprints at the edge of the woods and had started a slow procession after her, flashlights sweeping the trails, planting flags to mark the trail.

At the very least, Peter and Stiles had the advantage of not needing the light. Plus, they could jump around through the preserve instantaneously, vanishing from the trail, then appearing up on a ridge for a better look, then down in a gully to search for a trail there.

Stiles stopped on a boulder, trying to get a better view through the trees. He huffed in frustration. “Peter!” he called. In a second, Peter was standing next to him on the boulder. “What the hell is she doing out here anyway? I keep trying to think through what that book said about banshees, but this just doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m guessing that book doesn’t say much about banshees that are bit by werewolves,” Peter muttered.

It didn’t. Mostly, it talked about their relationship to death and the planes of life, death, and in between. It talked extensively about their screams and the powers behind them. Stiles frowned. “That scream nearly sent us to the next plane, didn’t it?” he asked. “You looked like you were fading out.”

Peter nodded. “Unless she was foretelling another death, then I believe that was the point of it.”

Stiles turned to face Peter, the boulder small enough that it left them toe-to-toe. “So what if this isn’t about the bite? What if it’s about there being restless spirits in the area?”

“You and me,” Peter said, pressing his lips together as he thought. A realization came over his expression, and he closed his eyes, tipped his head downward, and sighed. “Shit. I think she’s looking for something.” He reached up and squeezed the back of Stiles’s neck in an easy, familiar gesture that shouldn’t have been easy or familiar at all. “We need to go back to my old house.”

They appeared together, Peter’s hand not even leaving its grip until they’d arrived at the Hale house. It loomed, as dark and foreboding as ever in the shade of night and overgrown trees. As they approached the front steps, Stiles’s eyes caught on the patterns of dirt and dust on the front steps. He grabbed Peter’s elbow to hold him back. It was a habit, not wanting to disturb the footprints. Not that they could.

The bare footprints were faint but, upon closer inspection, unmistakable. “She was definitely here,” Peter murmured. They walked through the front door, which had been left ajar.

“So Derek isn’t here anymore? He finally got an apartment or what?” Stiles asked, glancing around.

“Or what,” Peter agreed with a put-upon sigh. “My nephew is never going to be the _Better Homes and Gardens_ sort, I’m afraid.” He led Stiles to the back of the house, to what might have been a dining room once upon a time. The roof had completely collapsed on one side of it, and greenery had started to spill into the space, vines cascading over the walls.

In the center of the room, several floorboards had been pried up, left strewn around the hole. Stiles kept walking toward it only to realize that Peter had frozen at the edge of the room, eyes wide and shoulders tensed. Stiles glanced between him and the hole in the floor. Just from the look on Peter’s face, he knew what he would see even before he stepped up and looked down into it.

Peter’s body, covered in blisters and char and dirt. No hair. Hardly any skin left. “You don’t want to look,” he advised softly.

“I already did,” Peter admitted. “Before.”

Stiles swallowed heavily and ripped his gaze away from the body. “She was definitely here. So where is she now?”

Peter gave Stiles a pointed look. “The only other place that makes sense.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles’s grave was three miles northeast from the Hale house, according to Peter. They hadn’t talked about his body again since the blow-up over Peter’s identity, and Stiles was relieved to hear that he’d been buried and not disposed of some other gruesome way.

They set out east at a run, their usual tireless pace. Maybe five minutes in, Peter grabbed his elbow, pulling Stiles to a stop. “There,” he said, pointing south.

Through the trees, Stiles could make out a few flashes of light. “Are the cops this far out already?” he asked, doubtful. Their sweeping formation was effective but slow, especially in this darkness.

“No,” Peter said softly. He jerked his head toward the lights, then disappeared. Stiles followed after him, blinking himself ahead to the edge of the trees they had been looking toward.

In the middle of the clearing, the omega hung from his arms, suspended above the ground, swinging wildly as he tried to free himself. If Stiles had a stomach, it would have been doing flips at the realization of what was about to happen.

“Fuck. No, no, no,” he muttered.

Chris Argent stepped into the clearing, followed by a handful of other men, the rear brought up by an older man. Gerard, he presumed. “Is this him?” Gerard called. “Is this our Stilinski?”

Chris stepped up to the omega, studying his face. “No.”

* * *

  
  


Peter pulled him away the second Gerard pulled the sword from its cloth. “You don’t need to see that,” he hissed. “This isn’t your fault. Look at me, Stiles.” He grabbed Stiles by the chin. “It isn’t.”

Stiles stumbled as Peter pulled him into another run, north this time and away from the hunters. They didn’t run fast enough to escape the sound of the sword colliding with the omega’s flesh. Stiles closed his eyes, focusing on the feel of Peter’s hand around his arm. It was the only sensation to focus on. He couldn’t feel his feet on the ground, no wind on his face, no cold bite of air on his skin. With his eyes closed, he might as well have been floating through space, except for Peter’s hand on him.

“Come on. It’s not that far,” Peter urged, and Stiles opened his eyes again.

He spotted Lydia before the grave, standing naked and covered in mud, hair matted. She was shivering. Stiles stepped up beside her cautiously, afraid she might scream again, and this time it would really do them in. He could hear her teeth chattering.

“You know, Lyds, there was a time I dreamed about seeing you naked,” Stiles murmured, going for levity. “But I really wish you were wearing a coat right now. Maybe some shoes?”

She didn’t acknowledge him, eyes fixed on a gray-white stone, about a foot in diameter. In the center of it, crudely scratched into the surface, was a triskeleon. The same symbol Derek had tattooed on his back. Stiles frowned at it. He hadn’t expected Peter to leave any sort of marker, to have shown any sentimentality for Stiles’s death.

“It’s our pack symbol,” Peter explained, not approaching the grave. “You died as pack.”

Stiles didn’t know what to say to that. It was the closest he’d come to believing Peter’s story about having wanted Stiles in his pack, having been _disappointed_ by his death. Instead, Stiles looked at Lydia. Her arms were curled in front of her chest, fingers trembling where they rested on her shoulders. “How cold do you think it is tonight?” he asked Peter.

“I’m not sure, but judging by how she’s shaking, it’s probably in the forties.”

Fuck, she was going to end up hypothermic, if she wasn’t already. Lydia had probably been a little better off when she was moving, but now she stood over his grave like her feet were anchored in. “Lydia, it’s Stiles,” he said. “Listen to me, whatever is going on, you need to snap out of this. You’re going to be in trouble if you stay out here like this much longer.”

“Stiles, be careful,” Peter said. He hadn’t come any closer. “She’s sought out your body, and now your spirit is right here with it. She already seems to want to put us to rest.”

Stiles turned to look at Peter. His clothes had changed, and Stiles suspected it had been unintentional. He wore the same outfit he’d worn the night they died. “We have to do something,” Stiles told him firmly. “She’s freezing. Why the hell is she like this right now?”

Peter dragged a hand over his face, looking more unsteady than Stiles was used to seeing him. “Too much at once,” he sighed. “It’s why her reaction to the bite was so severe.”

If the circumstance hadn’t been so dire, Stiles might have taken time to be pissed at Peter. Of course, he’d known all along why she was in the coma.

“On the same night that her powers were activated,” Peter went on, “three people died violent deaths. Two had direct personal connections with her, you and me. Not only that, but both of those stayed in-between as ghosts. You and I are upsetting the balance of life and death, and all of her instincts are telling her that things aren’t right.”

“So us being here, we’re pretty much torturing her,” Stiles said, sounding pained. “Driving her crazy.”

“She’s tuned into us,” Peter said softly. “We’re like a bad song stuck in her head. It’s what we wanted – for her to stay connected to those banshee senses. But she’s young, and she just got her powers.”

Stiles growled in frustration, rubbing his hands over his head as he turned back to Lydia. “Lydia!” he shouted. She flinched, but didn’t look away from his grave. “Lydia, wake up! Snap out of it! Come on, you’re stronger than this! You have to get out of these woods!”

Her fingers were bright red with the cold.

“Fuck. Fuck, I have to fix this,” Stiles muttered. “If she freezes to death out here because I’m too selfish to die -” He looked down at his own hand, then held it up toward her.

“Stiles, don’t do anything stupid,” Peter chastised.

“I made her snap out of it before!” Stiles yelled. He looked from his hand to Lydia. The last time he’d touched her, she nearly sent him to the afterlife. This would probably seal the deal. Taking a deep breath, Stiles shoved his hand toward her.

Peter caught him by the elbow and hauled him backward. Stiles struggled against his grip, and Peter held him around the waist, dragging him away from Lydia.

“Let go of me!” he snarled, writhing in Peter’s grasp, trying to pry his hands off.

“Stop it! You’re going to get yourself killed – for good.”

“We’re going to get her killed!”

Peter shoved him to the ground and pointed a finger at him. “Stay there,” he snapped.

Stiles glared up at him, but he didn’t move. Peter closed his eyes, and in a moment, he was his younger self. He walked over to Lydia and stood directly in front of her, placing himself between her and the gravestone she was staring at.

“Lydia, I want you to listen to me,” he said, his voice soft. “I know how confused you must be. How overwhelmed. Your instincts are telling you that this is your job, your responsibility to hold the line between life and death.”

He leaned in close, his mouth close to Lydia’s ear, but he was careful not to touch her. Still, one small twitch and she might have run into him on accident. Stiles lay still on the dirt, propped up on his elbows as he strained to hear Peter’s words.

“I know you can hear me. You don’t understand how, but you can. You can hear my voice. Lydia.” He hesitated, pulled back, then leaned in again. “Lydia, you have to let us go. Do you understand? We’re not your responsibility.”

Stiles gaped at Peter. That sounded an awful lot like tuning out of her senses, the one thing they’d agreed they needed her to do. If she allowed her powers to go latent again, there was no telling if they would be able to reach her.

One of Lydia’s hands moved forward and curled around Peter’s jaw. Stiles saw Peter wince, eyes squeezing shut as he braced himself for a scream. It didn’t come. Instead, she just held his face, like she could actually feel it.

Peter pressed on then. “I need you to trust me. I’ll come for you when it’s time. Until then, you let me worry about the veil. I’m the one that did this to you, to all of us.” His words seemed to catch in his throat for a moment before he whispered, “I don’t need your blood on my hands, too.”

Stiles had never seen Peter look like that before. He hadn’t thought him capable of it.

“Let us go,” Peter whispered.

Lydia’s hand fell, dropping from his face and falling through his chest. Stiles could see the discomfort on Peter’s face at the sensation, then saw the matching shiver in Lydia. Then she was blinking rapidly, sucking in a gasp like she had just come up from underwater.

Peter stepped back and away as she looked around herself.

“Hello?” she called warily. “Hello, is anyone out here?” Her teeth chattered between words.

They stayed with her while she wandered her way through the woods. Neither he nor Peter said anything about what had happened. They didn’t touch, and Stiles hardly noticed when Peter transformed back into his older self. There wasn’t much they could do to guide her in the right direction, and Stiles started to worry that this had all been for nothing, and she would still freeze out here. Or worse, the hunters would find her before the police.

Then, finally, the sweep of flashlights cut through the trees up ahead. Peter disappeared, then reappeared, smiling over at Stiles. “Police,” he confirmed.

“Hello?” Lydia shouted. “I’m here! I’m out here!”

* * *

  
  


Once the police had safely returned Lydia to the hospital, Stiles looked over at Peter, who had been unusually quiet for the entire ordeal. They both had, if he was being honest. The repercussions of the night hadn’t really sunk in yet. “I’m going to follow my dad to the station, see if there’s any other intel we’re missing,” he said. “Do you want to check in on the hunters, then meet me at the diner around eight?” The sun had barely started to come up, so that would give them a solid hour and a half, at least.

“Sure,” Peter agreed, and disappeared without further comment.

Nothing very thrilling went down at the station – mostly talk about incident reports, overtime, and expenses for the search party. Stiles’s dad settled in with a cup of coffee to get started on paperwork.

“We might have fucked things up tonight, Dad,” Stiles told him with a sigh. “I don’t know how this whole resurrection thing is going to work now. But don’t you worry. I’m going to do everything I can to get back to you. I promise.”

* * *

  
  


When Stiles got to the diner, Peter had already settled himself into the far side of their usual booth. It was the side where Peter had sat by himself earlier on, not the side they sat on together. Stiles frowned, the tension from earlier returning in full force. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood at the end of the table, watching Peter warily.

Peter sat slumped in what Stiles thought he’d meant as a casual sprawl, one elbow resting on the table, a foot resting on the seat with his knee up. Something about the tired tension in his eyes, though, and the way his gaze reluctantly dragged from the surface of the table up to Stiles’s face, made it read as more defensive than casual.

“Well,” he said in a forced sort of calm. “Where did you want to start?”

Stiles’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re always looking for something to be pissy at me about, and you’ve got nothing but ammunition today,” Peter drawled. “So what are you going to start with, hmm? The omega? Not telling you about how our deaths were affecting Lydia? Not telling you where I buried you? The fact that I wouldn’t let you nobly sacrifice yourself? Or do we want to get right to the problem at hand and talk about how we might not be able to use Lydia for the resurrection anymore?”

If he had time to think about it, yeah, Stiles was probably annoyed about the secret-keeping, though hardly surprised. That Peter kept secrets was a fundamental aspect of his personality, and Stiles didn’t exactly hold it against him anymore – no more than he would hold it against him that he kept a chess strategy to himself. Everything was a game to Peter, and that left Stiles to try to out-play him. The omega made him feel a little sick, but they’d already agreed that it was on the hunters, not them.

Stiles shook his head. “You got Lydia to snap out of that… that trance or whatever. That was what I wanted. I’m not mad at you for stopping me before.”

Peter huffed as if in irritation. “You realize the chances of us getting through to her again before the Worm Moon are razor thin.” It was like Peter didn’t believe that Stiles wasn’t mad at him.

As the realization hit him, Stiles’s shoulders sagged and he blew out a sigh. “You’re an idiot.” Peter wanted Stiles to be mad at him because he was mad at himself.

Rolling his eyes, Peter waved a hand at him. “Here it is. Get the bitch fest over with, then.”

Stiles put his fists on his hips and raised an eyebrow at Peter. “You sure you don’t want to keep having the bitch fest for me? Because you’re doing a great job.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Peter snapped.

With a groan, Stiles slid into the same side of the booth as Peter. “Ugh, move, would you?” He shoved Peter’s leg down so it rested along the back of the seat and Stiles could sit with his back to the man’s chest. Then he snagged Peter’s hand off the back of the booth and wrapped it around his own waist. “Knight to f3,” he announced.

Peter sat still and quiet behind him for a long moment before his arm squeezed around Stiles’s middle minutely. “Knight to f6,” he murmured.

They played through the game fairly quickly, though at one point, Peter made a bad move on purpose. Stiles twisted around and glared at him until Peter amended the move with a roll of his eyes. Stiles still won, but it was a fair game in the end.

Peter had his face pressed against the side of Stiles’s head. If they’d been alive, he would have been able to feel puffs of breath against his ear. Instead, he just felt the points where Peter physically touched him. “You’re really not upset?” Peter asked.

“No,” Stiles said firmly. “Lydia was in trouble. And all that stuff you said to her...” He thought about the look on Peter’s face when he told her he didn’t want her blood on his hands.

At the start of this whole undead adventure, ‘doing the right thing’ wasn’t exactly a quality that Stiles would have associated with Peter. Hell, even a few days ago, he’d still been more or less convinced that the man was the devil incarnate. But as Stiles thought through the night before, the way Peter had risked letting Lydia touch him when he wouldn’t let Stiles do the same, the way he took responsibility for their situation, he found himself creating a very different picture of the man. He had a feeling it wasn’t the picture that Peter liked to project.

Peter had buried Stiles with a pack headstone marker.

Peter hadn’t ridiculed Stiles for being touch-starved or tried to push for anything more than Stiles was comfortable, even though the kisses before clearly showed that he wanted more.

Peter made sure Stiles didn’t feel responsible for what the hunters did to the omega.

“When we had to push the boundary out,” Stiles said, thoughts coming together slowly. “You told me to focus on how much I hate you. Why that? Why not just tell me to pick an emotion?”

Tensing behind him, Peter said, “I was trying to focus you. We didn’t have a lot of time.”

“You’re lying,” Stiles laughed. It had become hilariously easy to pick out the lies.

“Well, if you think you’re going to get me to tell the truth, that means you already know,” Peter countered. “So go on. Tell me why.”

Stiles pulled away enough to sit up and turn to look at Peter, studying the guarded, almost hostile expression on his face. “It’s because we needed to be focused on the same thing,” he said, and from the way Peter flinched at his words, Stiles knew he was right.

“Don’t look smug about it,” Peter chastised.

“I’m not -” Stiles rolled his eyes. “I’m not glad that you _hate yourself_ , Peter,” he explained. “I’m just getting my head around this whole… you being a human being with emotions and guilt and shit. I honestly sort of thought you were a sociopath.”

Peter’s lip curled in distaste. “Thanks for that.”

“What, like that wasn’t what you wanted me to think? You play up all of those fake emotions badly enough that people know they’re fake, so they assume you’re just a manipulative psycho underneath, but underneath that manipulative psycho is _actual feelings_.” Stiles leaned in and pinched Peter’s cheek, just to be obnoxious, and Peter swatted his hand away with a scowl.

“What was that about not being smug?” he shot back.

Stiles twisted in the seat so his back was to the table, a leg curled between him and Peter and the other stretched out long. He placed both hands on Peter’s shoulders. “You’re going to figure out how to get Lydia back in on the plan,” he said firmly. “And even if you don’t, you still did the right thing, okay?”

Peter looked wary, but he held Stiles’s gaze. “Okay.”

Stiles closed the space between them and pressed his lips to Peter’s. The first two times, kissing him had been a matter of desperation to feel, to be touched. This time, it felt good in another way entirely. It felt sweet and warm and _right_.

It took a moment for Peter to respond, but then his hand slid up to the back of Stiles’s neck and he tilted his head, lips parting so Stiles could lick his way inside. He hadn’t had a whole lot of experience with kissing, but when he got overeager, Peter slowed him down, pulling back minutely to chasten the kiss before deepening it once more.

Neither of them needed to breathe, so it was a long time before they parted. Peter rested his forehead against Stiles’s, their noses pressed alongside one another. “Okay,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me [on tumblr](https://luulapants.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3


	6. An Old Maxim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the situation in the living world becomes increasingly complicated, Stiles and Peter struggle to get ready for the Wolf Moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to earn that E rating in this chapter.

Stiles sat in their usual booth, not so much as flinching when a hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. Sometimes it worried him, how quickly he’d gotten used to certain realities of being dead – like how only one person in existence could lay hands on him.

Tipping his head back against the seat, Stiles closed his eyes as Peter bent forward and pressed in for a slow, teasing kiss. He pulled back and murmured against Stiles’s lips, “I have good news.”

As Stiles slid further into the booth, Peter crawled after him on his knees, holding himself up on the back of the seat and the table so he loomed over Stiles with a grin. He leaned down and kissed him again, this time sliding his tongue past Stiles’s lips. Stiles groaned softly, wrapping his hands in the lapels of Peter’s jacket and tugging him closer.

If he had been alive, Stiles would definitely have a boner by now. Hell, he might have eventually come in his pants between the predatory way Peter caged him in and the way he fucked his tongue into Stiles’s mouth like a promise. As much as touching Peter felt good – felt _amazing_ – he found that there wasn’t a whole lot of reaction going on in the groin region. That was an anxiety for later, though.

“What’s your good news?” he asked.

Peter pulled back, rearranging them so they were curled together comfortably in the booth. “My dear nephew has been busy. Making betas.”

“Turning people into werewolves!” Stiles squawked, flailing and sitting up a little straighter, eyes wide. “How is that good news?”

“Because, Stiles,” Peter explained patiently, petting a hand over his hair and trailing the thumb of the other over his lower lip, “an alpha without betas is a weak one. Our spell relies on the strength of the alpha. Ergo...”

“You know I hate it when you say ‘ergo,’” Stiles said.

“ _Ergo_ ,” Peter pressed.

Stiles sighed. “Ergo, we want Derek to have betas before the resurrection. And God knows Scott isn’t scrambling to sign up with him.” He slumped against Peter’s side. “So who’d he turn?”

“Isaac Lahey – the boy your father interviewed at the cemetery after the omega dug up that corpse.” Peter wrapped an arm around Stiles, a hand splayed over his chest.

“Oh, yeah, his dad was a total shithead,” Stiles recalled.

“Abusive,” Peter informed him. “I suspect that’s why he accepted the bite.”

“Shit, that’s messed up,” Stiles murmured. “Did he – I mean, he warned Isaac about everything, right? That the bite could kill him and about the hunters?”

“I wasn’t there for it, but I know Derek. He doesn’t take the bite lightly. He would have told him.”

Stiles wrapped a hand around Peter’s wrist, squeezing it. “Well, then… I guess that’s still kind of fucked up. That the situation he was in was worth risking death.”

“Did you feel that way?” Peter asked softly.

Stiles shook his head. “No. I was just being selfish. I wanted the power.”

Peter pressed his lips to Stiles’s temple. “We all do stupid things for power.” He trailed his fingertips along Stiles’s collarbone, tracing the shape of it. “Besides, I don’t think it was that you were willing to die for power. _I_ was willing to die for power, and I did. You just...”

Peter trailed off, frowning thoughtfully, like he was second-guessing what he’d been planning to say. Stiles poked him in the ribs. “I just what?” he pressed.

Their eyes met, and Stiles saw what he now recognized as guilt in Peter’s expression. “You acted the way all teenagers do at some point. Like you were invincible.”

Stiles opened his mouth. His immediate impulse was to tell Peter not to feel guilty for Stiles’s decision. He caught himself, though. Because, even if it had been Stiles’s decision, Peter _was_ responsible, and they had both acknowledged that. He couldn’t go backtracking and saying what had happened was suddenly okay just because he and Peter were…

Well, _whatever_ they were.

Instead, he grabbed for humor: “I can’t tell if you’re self-flagellating because I’m dead or because you’re twice my age. Help me out here. I just want to be sure we’re on the same page.”

Peter flicked his ear and looked away from him with a smirk. “You’re intolerable.”

* * *

  
  


“What in the _fuck_ is that!” Stiles screeched, both hands flying up to clutch at the sides of his head. He turned and looked at Peter, who watched the creature with a casual curiosity that mismatched the situation entirely. “Peter!” Stiles snapped, shoving his shoulder.

They had spent all night looking for the ‘lizard monster’ Scott and Allison had run into the previous night, finally catching up to it at the school. It was very lizard-like. And very monster-like. And Stiles hadn’t thought life could get much weirder than being a ghost and macking on a former killer werewolf.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,” Peter said carefully, lips twisted into a frown.

Stiles punched his shoulder. “How is ‘lizard monster’ not enough data! How many lizard monsters are out there!”

Peter gave him a withering expression that Stiles took to mean, _You don’t want to know._

“Come on, what’s the lead suspect here?” Stiles pressed. “You’ve laid eyes on the thing.”

Peter sighed and looked back up as the monster scaled the side of the building. “Kanima.”

“Translation?”

As it disappeared from view, Peter turned back to Stiles. “It’s a mutation resulting from a werewolf bite, an abomination. I’ve never seen one in real life before. They’re rare.”

“Is it Isaac?” Stiles asked.

Peter shook his head. “No, Isaac has already presented as a normal wolf. I saw him shifted with Derek before. And it wouldn’t be Lydia either. A banshee can’t become a shifter of any sort. If it is a kanima, it’s someone else.”

“Great,” Stiles muttered. “Just what Beacon Hills needed. Another monster.”

“Excuse you,” Peter tutted. “I was a great monster.”

Stiles gave him his best bitch face and turned away from the school, scanning the parking lot for cars, any late workers the kanima might attack. The only ones left were the activities buses and the drivers ed cars.

“Hey, what did you do with my Jeep anyway?” Stiles asked. “I would have thought they’d find that even if they didn’t find my body.”

“Bottom of a lake,” Peter replied easily.

“Seriously?” Stiles whined. “I loved that Jeep! It was part of my whole...” He waved his hands around to indicate his general self. “My Stiles-ness, my look. My cool factor.”

Peter huffed a laugh and shoved his hands in his pockets. “It was a gas guzzler on the brink of death. Once we’re alive again, I’ll buy you a proper car as payment for your pain and suffering. How’s that?”

Stiles’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re going to _buy me a car_?” he demanded, then he took a half step back, looking Peter up and down in a serious, assessing manner. “Are you trying to be my sugar daddy?” Peter rolled his eyes so dramatically his whole head rolled with it, but Stiles pressed on. “Is that a thing right now? Because, like, I know you’re ten billion years older than me and all -”

“For the love of-”

“- but I don’t know if that’s a look I can pull off, dude. I’m, like, plucky and self-sufficient and shit. That’s also part of the Stiles-ness.”

“So you don’t want a car?” Peter asked, put-upon.

“I didn’t say that.”

Peter caught Stiles by the elbow and reeled him in against his chest, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips. “For the record, I was thinking a used Honda, not a Porsche.”

Stiles wrapped his arms around Peter’s middle. “So more of a Splenda Uncle than a sugar daddy, huh?”

Peter let go of him and turned to walk back toward the school. “I changed my mind, I’m going to the afterlife now,” he called loudly. Laughing, Stiles jogged to catch up with him.

They followed the kanima for most of the night, all the way to the preserve where it paralyzed and killed one of Argent’s men. Then, horror of horrors, back to Jackson’s house.

“Oh, come on, as if that guy wasn’t enough of a nightmare!” Stiles whined.

With a sigh, Peter reached over and squeezed the back of Stiles’s neck. He did things like that when he was stressed or thinking something through. Little touches to ground himself, to feel connected to _something_. Stiles understood the impulse. “Let’s head to the book cellar,” he decided. “I want to check back in the bestiary to confirm if this is actually a kanima.”

* * *

  
  


Peter sat with his back against the bookshelf, head tilted back and eyes closed in thought. The bestiary had confirmed his suspicions and had provided a few horrifying illustrations of what Jackson might become, given the right circumstances.

Stiles lay with his head pillowed on Peter’s thigh, tracing his finger up and down the inside of Peter’s knee. This was going to derail them, he knew. Potentially, it could mean they missed the Worm Moon, a possibility growing stronger every day. They could have another year together like this. Dead.

“Peter, I’ve been thinking about… y’know, how things are _progressing_ for us,” he said, measuring his words carefully.

A hand came down on his head, thumb brushing over his hair. “Me too,” Peter agreed.

Stiles looked up at him. “Yeah?”

Peter frowned, tracing his fingers idly over Stiles’s face, up the ridge of his nose, then over his brow. “We can’t afford the kind of delay this presents. We need to get Lydia back and preparing for the spell.”

Right. Peter was thinking about how their mission was progressing, not _them_.

“But we also can’t ignore the kanima issue,” he continued. “Someone has to be controlling that thing, and that’s not good news for Derek and his budding wolf pack. We can’t exactly use him for the spell if he’s dead.”

“Plus, you don’t want your nephew to die,” Stiles said firmly.

“He killed me!” Peter protested.

Stiles gave him a judgmental look, eyebrows raised. “You were kind of a psycho killer monster.”

“You’re saying I _deserved_ to be burned alive – again, might I add – and slaughtered by my only remaining family member?”

Stiles tilted his head, wrinkling his nose up as he sought a diplomatic way to say this. “I’m saying… _maybe_ when you go around in a crazy alpha monster shift and kill a bunch of people, getting killed back is an occupational hazard.”

“Unbelievable,” Peter huffed. “My only ally. In any case, we don’t have the time to deal with this kanima business and prepare Lydia at the same time. There’s only one thing for it.”

“Which is?”

Peter smirked down at him. “Divide and conquer.”

“I take care of Lydia, you handle the kanima?” Stiles supposed.

One of Peter’s hands smoothed over his chest, stroking idly. “The other way around, I think. We’re going to have to use the astral projection methods to reach Lydia now, and I already know how to do it. Besides, if she sees you, there’s no telling how she’ll react.”

“And she’ll react to seeing you any better?” Stiles challenged.

“Well, not me,” Peter agreed, and in a moment he took on his younger face. “But Pete?”

Stiles jabbed a finger at Peter’s stomach. “You know I think it’s creepy when you do that.”

Peter relaxed back into his adult appearance with a grin. “So you get to work on leaving clues for Derek and Scott, lead them to Jackson. And find out who’s controlling him. The more information they have, the better they’ll be positioned to handle the situation.”

“I can do that,” Stiles agreed. “We both knuckle down, get shit done… you still think we have a shot at the Worm Moon?”

For a moment, Peter didn’t answer, just stroked his fingers up Stiles’s chest, trailing along his neck and along his jaw. “It’s going to be close,” he admitted. “If we don’t make it...”

Stiles caught Peter’s hand in his own and sat up to look him in the eye properly. “If we don’t make it, we’ll look for another way. And if we don’t find another way, we’ll be ready next year.” He squeezed Peter’s hand. “We’re not going to stay like this, Peter.”

Peter wrapped a hand around the back of Stiles’s head and pulled him in for a slow kiss, a little bit hungrier than they usually felt. He stayed close, eyes closed, as he said, “Sometimes, I feel like the only time I’m not going crazy is when I’m touching you.”

In any other context, that statement might have seemed like too much too soon, too possessive, too desperate, but Stiles knew exactly what Peter meant. At first, he thought, he’d sort of imagined the feel of the ground under his feet, just out of habit. Out of expectation that it would feel the same as it always had. The longer they lingered as ghosts, the more the expectation waned, the more adrift he felt. Gravity meant less and less, leaving only Peter to anchor him.

Stiles climbed onto Peter’s lap, knees framing his hips, and kissed him again, hands sliding over his shoulders, grounding himself.

“Yesterday,” Peter murmured against his lips, “I realized I don’t remember what my own mouth tastes like. You know, it tastes like something. You don’t notice it, but it does. And now it’s just...”

And, because Stiles had no tact and was apparently capable of ruining literally any moment, he loudly blurted out, “I haven’t had a boner since I died.”

Peter froze, then slowly shifted Stiles back enough that they could look one another in the eye. He pressed his lips together, and Stiles realized with some irritation that Peter was trying not to laugh. Asshole.

“I’m serious!” Stiles said, voice hushed though no one else could hear him. “I’m sixteen. When I was alive, I got hard like it was my job. For, like, any reason. For no reason. I went through so much lotion my dad had to start buying it at Costco. And since then?”

He waved a hand toward his crotch frantically. “Radio silence! Nobody’s home. I mean, I still have a dick – I checked, like, almost immediately – like, before I checked if I could _breathe_ , I checked – but it just…” Stiles looked down at his crotch and Peter followed suit, looking curious and mildly amused. “It doesn’t _do_ anything.”

Peter rubbed a hand over his face, ending with it covering his mouth to not-so-subtly cover a smile.

“Don’t laugh!” Stiles whined. “It’s a serious problem! If we’re stuck like this for another year and we can’t even fuck...”

That seemed to catch Peter’s attention, his eyes sharp as the studied Stiles’s face. He lowered his hand, settling it on Stiles’s hip. “In our current state,” he said, “physiological reactions seem to be a sort of echo of what once was – expectations, you know. Before, you were getting hard involuntarily, like you said. Just a standard bodily reaction, like feeling hungry.”

“But we don’t get hungry anymore,” Stiles pointed out.

“Right. The involuntary reactions aren’t happening anymore. So the only reason it would happen is if you were in a situation where you had a sort of body-memory that made you _expect_ it to happen.”

Stiles squinted at him for a minute. Peter had a tendency to skirt around the point, phrasing things in diplomatic and conceptual terms that required translation. Stiles, despite finding it deeply annoying, also found he liked it in a weird sort of way. “You’re saying I’m not getting boners because I’m a virgin,” he summed up.

“Essentially,” Peter agreed.

“God, that _sucks_ ,” Stiles groaned, flopping backward onto Peter’s legs. “As if being a virgin wasn’t already the worst.”

Peter trailed his fingers up the inseam of Stiles’s jeans from his knees and stopping just short of his crotch, as if simply confirming their topic of conversation. Because touching like that really should have gotten a reaction.

Stiles made a frustrated whining noise, squeezing his eyes shut.

“You know,” Peter said, still touching, “if it’s a question of expectations, perhaps a bit of visualization would help. You might not have real life memories to work off, but a strong fantasy might do the trick.”

Peeking an eye open at him, Stiles said, “Believe me, I have plenty of sex fantasies up here.” He tapped his temple.

Peter lifted an eyebrow at him. “About me?”

Stiles snorted. “No, obviously not about you. You were a literal monster from my nightmares right up until the moment I died and I haven’t really been in the fantasy-making mood since then.”

Leaning forward, Peter wrapped his hands around Stiles’s wrists and pulled him back up to a sitting position. “Turn around,” he instructed, shifting his legs apart so Stiles could settle between them with his back to Peter’s chest. “How about this...” He spoke directly against Stiles’s ear, his arms wrapping around his middle. “How about you close your eyes and I’ll describe to you exactly what it’ll be like when we fuck for the first time.” His voice came out in a low rumble, soft and possessive all at once. “And you do your best to picture every detail. Then, when the time comes, you’ll have some expectations to work off.”

Stiles swallowed heavily, his words deserting him for a moment as his mind went into the ghost equivalent of a blue screen.

Peter’s hold loosened. “Only if you want,” he added gently.

Grabbing Peter’s hands, Stiles wrapped them back around himself. “Tell me,” he said.

He felt Peter smile against the back of his neck. “Well, to start, it certainly wouldn’t be down here. Perks of being invisible, we could find somewhere really nice. A hotel suite. Maybe we couldn’t feel the bed, but we could enjoy the ambiance, after all.” He mouthed at Stiles’s jaw. “You deserve something special.”

Stiles closed his eyes and pictured the room as Peter described it for him. Big windows looking out over the city from high up. The main room would have a bar and a little kitchen area, two leather couches in front of the window, a coffee table between them. Past those, a set of French doors – “those are the ones with the windows in wooden frames” – would open to the bedroom.

“We wouldn’t go there right away,” Peter told him. “No rush, we would take our time. Sit on the couch and play a game of chess, relax. I’d let you win, but I wouldn’t let you know I let you win.”

“I can always tell when you let me win,” Stiles argued, and Peter laughed against his shoulder.

“You would pretend not to know, then,” he decided, “because you know I’m just trying to soften you up. I’d pull you into my lap and kiss you, like we were kissing earlier. I’d slide my hands up the back of your shirt...”

Peter slipped a hand up the front of Stiles’s shirt, settling it flat against his abdomen. “I’ve never seen you before, you know. I bet you’re beautiful. I bet these little freckles and moles...” He kissed at a few on Stiles’s neck. “I bet they go all the way down. So I’d peel your shirt off to see, kiss every one of them.”

Stiles shivered in Peter’s grasp. “And what would I do?”

“You would be gasping for it. Already getting excited, and I’d feel it through your jeans. It doesn’t take much to get you going, does it? You’d be rolling your hips down against me, your body begging for it without even realizing it. I’d keep kissing you, kissing your neck and chest – are your nipples sensitive, Stiles? I could take my time with those.”

He flicked a thumb over one, and god damn, Stiles did feel a reaction. Not the whole-body connection of arousal, sure, but a little zing of pleasure right where Peter touched him. “Yeah, they are,” he agreed.

Peter nipped at his earlobe. “I’d tease them until your jeans got too tight, until you were begging me to touch you. I bet it doesn’t take much. You’re not used to being teased, are you?” Stiles shook his head. “But I’ll be nice. I’d open up the fly of your pants, give you a bit of relief...”

His hand slid down to cup Stiles through his pants, and Stiles tried his best not to feel self-conscious about the fact that he was still soft. Peter must have sensed his hesitation, because he murmured, “It’s okay. We’re just talking. You’ll be so hard for me when we do this for real. We’re still sitting on the couch, you in my lap, and your cock is straining against your underwear. I’d hold you just like this through them.”

At the squeeze of Peter’s hand, Stiles felt a sudden burn of arousal rush through him, starting at his groin. The feeling startled a little whine from between his lips, and he jerked forward in Peter’s hold. This could work, he realized with growing confidence. Peter’s little story time could really work.

Peter squeezed again, stirring up another jolt of pleasure. “In your little library of fantasies, have you imagined what it would be like with a man?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Stiles breathed.

“When you picture it, how does it go? Role-wise, do you picture -”

“Getting fucked,” Stiles answered before Peter could complete his question. “I picture getting fucked.” Peter’s hand massaged him through his jeans, and Stiles whimpered. “I finger myself sometimes,” he heard himself admitting, “when I have time. I like it, like feeling full.”

Peter made a noise very much like a growl, and for the first time, Stiles felt him shift his hips, the bulge of an erection against the small of Stiles’s back.

“Oh, holy fuck,” he whined. He felt it, finally, just the first hints of an erection, but it was _something_. “Keep talking. Peter, please. You’ve got my pants open. I’d want your shirt off. What happens next?”

“I’d pick you up and carry you to the bedroom. You’re getting deflowered on a proper bed, sweetheart.” He laughed softly, pinching Stiles’s hip in a tease. “I’d set you on the bed and get you the rest of the way undressed, laid out bare for me, perfect. You’d look so beautiful, it would be all I could do to restrain myself.”

“Fuck, I don’t want you to,” Stiles huffed.

“But I would,” Peter insisted. “I’d wrap my lips around you, suck you down slowly while I tease your ass.” He paused then, thoughtful. “No way we could use lube, I suppose, but… well, more perks of being a ghost, right? If you expect yourself to open up for me, you will. And you’ll want it so badly, want to feel my fingers inside of you, you’ll open right up. Tell me, Stiles, when you were fingering yourself in your bed at home, did you find your prostate?”

Stiles groaned softly and nodded, head tipping back against Peter’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

Peter licked at his throat. “Perfect. So you’ll be able to feel it, be able to expect it when I find it. And I will. I’ll curl my fingers into it just enough to get you going, get you squirming and trying to fuck down onto them.”

Stiles had a decent semi going, rolling his hips between the bulge of Peter’s erection and the firm grip of his hand. “I wouldn’t want to come like that, though,” Stiles told him. “I’d want to come with you in me.” He had fantasized about that act quite a lot, even if it hadn’t involved Peter, and he knew how he wanted it to go.

“Stiles,” Peter breathed against his neck, like he couldn’t quite believe that Stiles could say something like that. “Of course, sweetheart. You can have whatever you want. I’d spread your legs, push them up to open you up for me. You’d hold them for me, wouldn’t you? Keep yourself nice and open for me?”

It occurred to Stiles that this was the most he’s felt since dying. Sure, he and Peter had made out, cuddled, touched, but that mostly felt like pressure, solidness. Now, with Peter wrapped around him and a roil of pleasure curling in his groin, the brush of lips against his neck, Stiles could almost forget that he couldn’t feel the air around them, couldn’t smell anything. He almost felt alive. “Yes. I’d beg you. I’m so not above that. I’d beg you to fuck me.”

Peter nuzzled against his ear. “I know you would. You’d keep begging while I pressed into you, begging me for more, to go faster, but I’d go slow. I’d make sure you felt every inch of me.”

Spinning in Peter’s grip, Stiles straddled his thighs again and kissed Peter, hard and eager. He ground his hips forward, groaning at the feel of Peter, hard in his jeans. “It worked,” Stiles said against his lips, getting words out between sloppy little kisses. “We can – I can – you should fuck me.”

A hand came up to press against Stiles’s chest, putting a bit of space between them. Peter looked as hungry for it as Stiles felt, eyes wild as they darted from Stiles’s eyes to his lips. “We should wait,” Peter said, and it sounded like it pained him to say it.

“What?”

Peter huffed a laugh and placed a hand under Stiles’s chin, closing his jaw, which had dropped open in disbelief. “I said, we should wait. We’re both feeling a bit… well, don’t get me wrong. I need this to ground me as much as you do. But you thought I was a psychotic murderer not so long ago, and your first time should be about more than...” He cupped a hand around Stiles’s jaw, staring at the place where their skin connected. “…more than a bit of desperation.”

* * *

  
  


They went to work after that. It felt a little strange. Early on, they had spent their days apart, mostly, only meeting up at night. Since the night they let the omega into the territory, they had spend less and less time apart. Stiles still got a few independent hours in, checking on his dad and Scott and Lydia, during which Peter liked to “keep his finger on the pulse,” which usually meant stalking his nephew.

Beyond that, they had stuck together most of the time, partly due to their time crunch to prepare for the Worm Moon and partly due to their mutual need for touch.

Now, under Operation Divide and Conquer, they went to the school together then parted ways, Peter following Lydia and Stiles following Scott or Jackson. They usually reconvened during the day in case the other had anything interesting to report, then continued their separate missions into the night.

Jackson always struck at night.

The first step, Stiles had decided, was for Derek to get eyes on the kanima. He didn’t quite have Peter’s supernatural savvy, but, according to Peter, he used to be quite the bookworm.

The logistics of the thing proved to be a whole lot more difficult than the planning. In the end, it mostly involved knocking things over to draw attention in the direction of the kanima. Derek told his puppies – of which he had made more and _holy shit Erica Reyes_ – and the puppies told Scott.

His crowning moment came at the school, where he managed to knock Gerard Argent’s flashdrive off his keychain while he was making threatening comments to Scott. At first, he’d been afraid that Scott would do something reflexively and horribly polite, like returning it. Instead, like an angel, he picked it up, turned it over in his hands, and pocketed it.

“Hey, look at you, buddy!” Stiles cheered at him. “You’re getting all strategic. Maybe I’ve been holding you back, doing all the brain work for you, huh?”

What followed was possibly the longest week of Stiles’s life. From one life-or-death (for the others) emergency to the next. Watch Gerard stab Scott, draw attention to Jackson, stop Derek from killing Lydia, draw attention to Jackson. His friends were on the right track, but they needed to get there _faster._

* * *

  
  


Stiles was starting to feel a little frayed at the edges as he collapsed against Peter in their booth after Danny figured out what Jackson was and Jackson attacked him as the kanima. Thankfully, Danny had managed to get the information to Scott beforehand.

“There’s just too many moving parts,” Stiles huffed. “Gerard is playing some sort of game for the kanima. Allison’s mom knows about Scott and Allison and is probably going to try to kill him. Scott doesn’t have any reliable backup now that Danny’s in the hospital. Derek is the worst alpha in the universe, and his betas are kind of figuring that out. And to top it all off, I have _no fucking clue_ how to tell them Matt is controlling Jackson.” Stiles felt himself getting more and more worked up, practically lifting up off his seat.

Peter’s hand curled around Stiles’s shoulder, squeezing, and Stiles settled more firmly into his seat. “Take a deep breath,” he advised. “You have to look at the bigger picture. Think of it like a chess game. Matt is the king – important but relatively powerless on his own. But the rest of the pieces are circling up around him. Jackson is the power piece, the fast-mover. The queen.”

“If it’s a chess game, there’s three players with the Argents,” Stiles protested. “Maybe four depending on how you count Derek’s little pack.”

“No,” Peter said, leaning over to press his lips to Stiles’s temple. “There are always two sides. Our side and our opposition. The Argents are still pieces in play, still a threat, but they are not our goal right now. Victoria is a bishop, out for Scott. Chris is the knight, he can fall back or jump ahead to improve his position.”

“What does that make Gerard?” Stiles asked. “A rook, looking to castle with the king?”

Peter grinned and kissed Stiles on the lips, looking so fond and proud of him that Stiles didn’t quite know what to do with it. He went on: “Our pieces may not be placed in a way that is helpful to us currently, but at the end of they day they are _our pieces_. Derek, his betas, Scott, Lydia.”

“So who’s our king, then? Who do we need to protect?”

Peter cupped Stiles’s jaw in his hand and looked him in the eye. “Ourselves, Stiles,” he said firmly. “We must always protect ourselves first.”

* * *

  
  


Another long week came, excruciating, and taking him away from Peter more often than not. The chess exercise they went through had helped Stiles to get himself thinking strategically again, focusing on the most important pieces to protect, the most vulnerable pieces, rather than wasting time on those that were already secure.

His dad, increasingly beaten down by Stiles’s disappearance, had taken a leave of absence from work. Though it went against his instincts, Stiles forced himself to see it as a good thing. If nothing else, it meant his father was _safe_.

Peter had been busy with Lydia, the queen capable of taking action on their behalves, probably doing unethical, freaky mind-fuck things that Stiles didn’t want to know or think about. That left Stiles to wrangle the rest. Derek was their king’s bishop and as essential to “protecting the king” as the queen. However, Scott was the most vulnerable, staring down the full power of the Argents.

It all came to a head at an underground concert. There wasn’t much Stiles could do to help as they tried to capture Jackson.

The crowd was another problem altogether. There was no avoiding being walked through, the shivers intensifying with each pass until suddenly Stiles couldn’t feel them at all. They passed through him, nothing but images.

He watched the proceedings on the dance floor, feeling increasingly detached with every passing moment, every person that walked through him. They weren’t shivering anymore either. They couldn’t sense his presence. He couldn’t feel the ground under him and realized his feet weren’t even touching it anymore.

Fuck, he had to get out.

Stiles appeared outside just in time to see Victoria Argent dragging Scott into a loading bay. “That’s my queen’s bishop, you bitch,” he snapped. Stiles flickered from outside the club, appearing inside the loading bay just as she closed the door. Scott had been knocked out cold.

“Come on, buddy, gotta wake up. Gotta get you out of here,” he pleaded, flickering from place to place around Scott. He tried to touch him, plunge his hand through his arm, his chest, but he couldn’t feel it, which meant neither could Scott.

“ _Fuck!_ ”

Scott started to come to, and Stiles watched helplessly as Mrs. Argent set up the wolfsbane vaporizer. He closed his eyes, tried to focus, focus on how much he loved Scott and how solid his arm would feel as it swung through the vaporizer.

Nothing. His arm rushed through it like air.

“No, no, no, buddy. Come on, Scotty boy. Get up. Gotta fight. You can take her!” Scott started to push up, and Stiles told himself his encouragement was getting through somehow. He had to tell himself that or he would feel way too helpless.

Then Argent kicked him to the ground. “Don’t you know?” she hissed. “The lone wolf never survives.”

If Stiles had to stand here and watch his best friend die – no, he couldn’t think about it. This couldn’t be real. He felt himself floating, looking down in dismay as his shoes started to come up off the ground. “No,” he snapped at them. “NO! He’s not alone! He’s not alone!”

He rushed at the vaporizer and fell right through it. It didn’t even budge, and he hadn’t landed on the floor. He’d ended up somewhere above it.

“No,” Stiles whimpered, turning to look at Scott.

“I’m not,” Scott wheezed. “I’m not alone.” He roared, then collapsed.

By the time Derek arrived to save Scott, Stiles had floated a foot off the ground.

* * *

  
  


Stiles got to the diner around eleven, earlier than they had planned to meet that night, and though he appeared on the tile floor as usual, he immediately started to drift upward. He could drift forward toward the booth, but it felt like swimming against a current. By the time he got there, he found himself sitting cross-legged a couple of inches above the table.

“No, no, no,” he hissed, looking around himself frantically. Stiles wanted to ask why this was happening, but he’d been moving toward this for days now. Slowly coming untethered from the constraints and expectations of the physical world. Moving through a wall or a door didn’t take even a moment’s hesitation now. He walked and ran less, preferring to disappear and appear about. And now he had lost touch with gravity completely.

Though he had been calling himself “ghost” from the beginning, Stiles had never quite felt like the formless specter that featured in cartoons, the raggedy ends of a sheet where feet should have been. Now, he felt himself careening toward it – or worse.

He hadn’t seen another ghost beside himself or Peter since dying. Sure, the requirements to become a ghost limited the number of people that could become one, but in a town as bizarre and monster-inhabited as Beacon Hills, surely they would have run into at least one other. Maybe ghosts just weren’t sustainable, maybe they degraded over time.

Maybe he would keep drifting up, up, up into space, into the void, and he would still exist but there would be nothing. No banshees to send him to rest, no resurrections to ground him, nothing but darkness and vacuum for eternity.

Where was Peter? Had he drifted away already?

Stiles hadn’t had a panic attack since dying, which made sense since he didn’t have a brain to make all of those horrible little chemicals. This didn’t feel like a panic attack either. Not really. He didn’t feel like he couldn’t breathe because he _didn’t_ breathe. His chest didn’t feel tight because he couldn’t feel it at all. He had no stomach to tie itself in knots, no hands to shake, no heart to pound.

Just thoughts, spinning and folding in on themselves over and over, spiraling smaller and larger like fractals, until at once they were too large and too small for him to perceive. Overwhelming. Intangible.

Stiles realized he had started to sob, recognized the sound, but when he touched his face, he found no tears. Early on, when he cried, there had been tears. Echoes of tears, sure, memories of what they felt and looked like. He had forgotten how to cry.

“Stiles?” Peter’s voice came from ahead of him, but Stiles couldn’t see him. Was he even in the diner anymore? He didn’t see black – he didn’t see anything.

A hand closed around his ankle, firm and tugging downward.

“Stiles, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles sobbed. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how to stop it.”

Arms wrapped around him, and he felt suddenly solid again, anchored as his hands found Peter’s sides, clutching in his shirt. He saw light, blobs of it that slowly coalesced into the familiar diner. Stiles clutched in harder, pressing against Peter as the world started to orient itself again. Down became down. Up became up. The spiraling fractals unwound, leaving him shivering and clinging to Peter.

“Oh my god,” he sighed. “Oh my god, I’m back.”

“Where did you go?” Peter asked urgently, pulling back just enough to hold Stiles’s face in both hands.

Stiles shook his head. “It was nowhere.” He saw Peter scowl, like he thought Stiles was trying to brush him off, and quickly added, “No, I mean, it was literally – it was _nowhere_. Nothing. I – is that what the afterlife is, Peter? Is it just nothing? Do you just turn into nothing?”

Horror passed over Peter’s face, and for a moment he said nothing. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “Give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. On matters of faith...” He shook his head.

Stiles yanked him closer, pressing his face into Peter’s neck. “Peter, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to disappear.”

Peter wrapped his arms around Stiles, squeezing him tight. “I won’t let you. Lydia is ready. We’ll be ready for the Worm Moon. We’re going back, do you hear me? We’ll be alive again.”


	7. Worth A Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Worm Moon finally arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a _teensy_ little bit of animal sacrifice in here, but I don't think it's too graphic? But yeah, be warned.

“ _I’ll take Before & After for 800, Alex.”_

Stiles bounced his knee restlessly and glanced over at his dad. His reading glasses had slipped low on his nose. The files in his hands weren’t directly about Stiles, for once. Instead, he’d started combing through cold cases that could be related to supernatural events. Maybe whatever had happened to Stiles had happened before, he reasoned. Maybe if he solved one of these cases, it would give him a new lead.

“No wonder you suck at Jeopardy,” Stiles said. “You put it on and then you don’t even watch it.”

“Stiles?” Peter asked from behind him. “How are you doing?”

He turned to see Peter in his younger form. Stiles wrinkled his nose at the sight but didn’t say anything. “I mean, I’m still on the couch. How’s… you know...”

“Fine.” He sat on the arm of the couch and placed a hand on Stiles’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay here?”

Stiles’s dad cleared his throat noisily and reached for the whiskey glass on the end table. His drinking had only gotten worse lately. Before, he had wanted to stay sharp for the search. Not anymore.

“If I’m not?” Stiles asked.

Peter shrugged. “Then you’re not. We can’t risk you drifting off again.”

Since the incident at the diner, Peter hadn’t left Stiles’s side, worried that Stiles could slip away into the afterlife without Peter there to pull him back. It meant they had to give up on helping Scott and Derek with the kanima issue. They had to protect themselves first, as Peter liked to say.

“I can’t tell if you’re lying, Stiles,” he continued. “I need to be able to trust you on this. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles admitted. He hadn’t been floating, but the possibility terrified him. “Maybe not. So what do we do?”

Peter stood, tugging Stiles to his feet. “You’ll have to come with.”

An unsettling mix of relief and dread sang through him. “Alright. Where?”

“Your grave. She’s still digging.”

* * *

  
  


“ _Oh my god_ , is that my skin?”

“I told you not to look.”

“It is, that’s an actual hunk of my skin just sitting on the ground. I don’t even have a stomach, and I want to throw up right now.”

“Don’t look at it, then! Look at the moon, isn’t it lovely? It’s almost full.”

“It looks like when milk turns into a solid.”

Peter came up behind Stiles, grabbed his face in both hands, and forcefully angled it up and toward the moon. “Stiles. Stop looking at it. This is exactly why I didn’t want you to be here for this.”

Stiles made a whining noise. “What if the renewal spell doesn’t work and I come back and I have no skin?” he moaned.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Peter chided, wrapping his arms around Stiles’s middle. He kissed his neck. “I would never let you come back with no skin. I like touching it too much.”

“Wow,” Stiles said, gazing up at the moon and hugging Peter’s arms around himself. “You’re really trying to hit on me while Lydia lugs my corpse through the woods, aren’t you?” He patted Peter’s hand. “Fucking _wow_.”

Peter laughed and pressed his nose to the back of Stiles’s neck just briefly. Then Stiles could feel him look up toward the moon as well. “Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,” he recited. More Sherlock, Stiles assumed. “With the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles leaned against the railing of the stairs, grinning like a maniac. Peter had his hands on the railing on either side of him, his body bracketing Stiles in. “What in the fuck is going on?” Peter asked.

“They’re the drag queens from The Jungle,” Stiles said. “Danny must have invited them. Oh, man, this party is going to be bonkers. It’s a shame we have to roofie everyone.”

Peter flicked his ear. “We’re not _roofie-ing_ anyone. It’s a little bit of wolfsbane to incapacitate the wolves. We can’t afford to have too many moving parts tonight.”

Twisting around so he had his back against the railing, Stiles slipped his hands over Peter’s shoulder and kissed him. “How long do we have before everyone goes nuts?”

Peter smirked. “Long enough. Why?”

In a second, Stiles vanished from his arms, reappearing at the top of the stairs. “Come on,” he called. “It’s a party. I always wanted to be one of the cool kids that snuck off to hook up at a party.”

“Great,” Peter laughed as he followed Stiles upstairs, “and I always wanted to be one of those skeezy adults that hooks up with teenagers at high school parties.”

Blithely ignoring the sarcasm, Stiles stretched his arms out wide and lead the way toward the bedrooms at the end of the hall. “There – see? We both get to live our dreams.”

Peter caught up to him, grabbing him by the hips and pushing him through a closed set of double doors. Based on the neutral decor, Stiles figured it was probably a guest room. He tugged Peter toward the bed, falling back on it and pulling Peter on top of him.

This last week, as they made final preparations for the ceremony, Stiles had put his full trust in Peter to keep him here, keep him grounded, to stand by him. Any time Peter wanted, he could have just walked away and let Stiles float into oblivion. If anything, Peter had been overly cautious. He seemed afraid to stop touching.

They made out for a long while on the bed, Peter’s hips rolling against his and Stiles conjuring up the memories of the fantasy they had created in the cellar. This wasn’t a honeymoon suite, but Lydia Martin’s house was nothing to sneeze at either. Outside, he could hear the sounds of the party starting to pick up, a clamor of voices building under the music.

“I’ve been thinking,” Stiles murmured against Peter’s neck, dragging his tongue over the faint stubble. “After tonight, when we’re alive again, everything is going to feel different. Touching, I mean.”

Peter pulled back a bit, looking down at Stiles and cupping his neck, thumb tracing the underside of his jaw. “We’ll probably be a bit overwhelmed, I imagine,” he agreed.

“I mean how touching you feels like so much more now,” Stiles explained, “because we can’t feel anything else. It won’t be as intense when we’re back.”

“Mm, I have a feeling we’ll still manage,” Peter said with a smirk.

Stiles ducked his head a bit to catch Peter’s thumb in his mouth, nipping at the pad of it. He looked up to see the hungry look in the man’s eyes. “I want to be with you like this,” he said. “Just this once.”

Nodding, Peter ducked in for another kiss, his hand skating down Stiles’s side to the hem of his shirt. The clothes didn’t really exist, no more than their bodies did. Stiles could easily have just decided to not be wearing a shirt anymore, but he liked the idea of being undressed. He liked the way it felt when Peter’s hands slid up his rib cage, pushing it up and off. It vanished the moment it left Stiles’s fingers.

“Huh. I kind of wondered about that,” Stiles laughed, looking up where it had been. “Why do you think – _oh my god_.” He looked down to watch as Peter dragged open-mouthed kisses over his chest, down to his abdomen.

“What do you want?” Peter asked with a curl of his lips.

Stiles reached down, running his fingers through Peter’s hair. “Everything,” he said, sounding more confident than he’d expected, voice steady. “Everything we talked about before. I want it all.”

Peter surged forward, capturing Stiles’s lips again, and when Stiles’s arms wrapped around him, he felt skin, warm under his fingers, instead of the v-neck Peter had been in before. The light scratch of hair against his chest. One of Peter’s hands slipped between them, groping Stiles’s hard-on through his jeans.

“I see our little visualization exercise did the trick,” Peter murmured against his lips, and Stiles bucked into his touch with a while.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” he agreed.

“Good.” Peter popped the button on his jeans, then slipped his hand into Stiles’s underwear, wrapping his fingers around bare skin. “I want you to enjoy every second of this.”

Stiles leaned up for another kiss, this time to muffle his own moan as Peter stroked him inside the confines of his jeans. It felt like so much more than he had expected, lighting up his whole being with pleasure and want and warmth. “Peter. Oh my god, I can’t wait to feel you in me.”

The bedroom doors flew open, banging against the walls. Stiles flailed as Peter sat up, turning just in time to see Allison storm into the room.

“You get two minutes,” she snapped, and then Matt followed her in.

“Seriously?” Stiles whined, sitting up as Peter shifted back on the bed. “Allison, you cockblocker!”

“It’s not like she can see us,” Peter reminded him. “We could just...”

Stiles laughed and leaned forward, tugging Peter in for a kiss. “Okay, but no. I so am not losing my V-card in front of Allison and a serial killer.”

Peter rubbed at the back of his neck and glanced away. “I guess that’s fair,” he admitted.

“Hey,” Stiles said, softer, moving into Peter’s lap. “After tonight, we’ll be alive again. No ghost bodies, no full moon deadlines.”

Peter cut him off momentarily with a kiss, more desperate than Stiles had expected, but he supposed they were both getting desperate to be alive again.

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Stiles said. “When we’re alive.”

The way Peter stared at him then, with raw longing and fondness in his eyes, should have scared Stiles. For the brief time they’d been together in this mess, they had been careening toward something too intense, too fast. Stiles didn’t have it in him to look away, though.

Peter smiled and traced his fingers along Stiles’s hairline. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

* * *

  
  


“Can you tell her not to lift with her back?” Stiles tilted his head to the side, cringing as Lydia lugged Derek up the stairs of the Hale house.

Peter shot Stiles a withering look. “I’m not risking interfering with weeks of brainwashing to lecture her on proper lifting safety.”

“Well, maybe you should,” Stiles argued, fists on his hips. “He weighs at least twice as much as her.”

If he were being honest, Stiles might admit that this argument was more about his inability to shut up in high-pressure situations than it was about Lydia’s spine. Stiles didn’t particularly feel like being honest.

In the back room, Lydia had already set the stage the night before with mirrors carefully positioned to capture and direct the moonlight toward the hole in the flooring. Still wrapped in the tarp he’d been buried in, Stiles’s corpse lay next to the hole, one arm stretched out from beneath it. The black ooze had soaked through the tan fabric and stiffened. Peter had tried his best to keep Lydia from getting a good look at Stiles’s face, afraid the recognition might snap her out of her fugue state.

Lydia grunted with effort as she dragged Derek the last couple of yards into the room. He started to rouse slightly, his eyes fluttering open. “Lydia?” he rasped, mumbling weakly at her, telling her to stop. Stiles almost felt guilty about it, but he liked to think that, despite their differences, Derek would be okay with this if he knew that it would bring Stiles back to life.

With Derek in place, Lydia brought one of his arms over his head, dropping it on top of Stiles’s and wrapping Stiles’s hand around his wrist.

“That’s it, Lydia,” Peter said, and his voice carried like an echo in the room, telling Stiles that he had projected it so she could hear. “First the renewal spell, just like we talked about.” It took less effort, conveying a voice rather than an image. Especially for a banshee, who had a keen ear for the voices of the dead.

She went to the back corner of the room, where Stiles knew a wildlife trap had been tucked away last night. He turned his back. “Oh my god, I can’t watch this part.”

Peter placed a hand on his shoulder, and Stiles expected reassurance, for him to say that Stiles didn’t need to watch. Instead he said, “You should. This is the price of getting your life back. It would be respectful to watch.” Stiles bit his lip and looked over to find a stoic sort of expression on Peter’s face. He nodded and turned back around.

Lydia had a squirming rabbit in her hand, gripping it by the base of its ears as it flailed and kicked. In the other hand, a curved dagger. She held it over Stiles’s body and began to chant softly. Despite his endless reading exercises, Stiles hadn’t managed to pick up much Latin. Peter had given him a rough translation for this, though.

_The burning of a forest raises new seeds. The decay of flesh feeds the earth. There can be no birth without death. For all things there is a price. Blood for blood, flesh for flesh._

She drew the blade in one quick, decisive moment, and the blood sprayed across the already stained cloth. The rabbit’s movements slowed, then stopped. Lydia continued to chant.

At first, it didn’t look like anything had changed, then Stiles saw the flesh on his exposed hand, which had been pale and loose and bloated, begin to tighten back into shape. “Holy shit.”

Peter wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “I told you. Now for the good part.”

Lydia didn’t need to renew Peter’s corpse because of his healing factor. Stiles looked up and saw the Worm Moon just above the tops of the trees. She took Derek’s other arm, lowering it into the hole in the floor and wrapping Peter’s hand around the wrist.

“Lydia, you don’t… don’t know what you’re doing...” Derek mumbled.

This part required no chanting, no magic words. Just Derek, their bodies, their spirits, and the moon. Lydia walked over to the largest mirror and tilted it down. In an instant, the beam of moonlight flashed through the room, bouncing from mirror to mirror until it cascaded down over Derek and the corpses from above.

Derek roared, his eyes flaring red. The redness seemed to bleed back into the moonlight as he arched up off the floor, writhing in what looked like a terrible amount of pain.

“Fuck,” Peter muttered. “ _Fuck!”_ He stepped away from Stiles and projected his voice. “Lydia, break the beam. We need to wait.”

She tilted the mirror away again, and Derek collapsed down, panting, “Lydia, what are you doing?”

“What’s happening?” Stiles demanded, grabbing Peter’s arm. “Why isn’t it working?”

“He can’t take it,” Peter said, eyes fixed on his nephew. “His spark isn’t enough. The spell was made for one person.”

A sort of coldness settled over Stiles. Peter said it so quickly, so simply. He didn’t sound even a little surprised. “You knew,” he realized. “You knew it might not work for two people. You’ve known since we first read about it, haven’t you?”

Looking over his shoulder at Stiles with a harsh glare and a curl of his lip, Peter snapped, “Yes.”

Stiles yanked at Peter’s arm, spinning him so he could yell at his face. “You son of a bitch! This whole time, you let me think it was going to work for us both! So I would help you!”

“That was the idea,” Peter agreed grimly. “At first. I don’t know exactly when I changed my mind.”

A part of him wanted to shriek, to cry, to punch Peter in his stupid face for keeping this from him. Instead, Stiles found an unfamiliar steadiness inside of himself. “What happens if we try to work the ritual with both of us?”

Peter glanced back at Derek. “The spell pulls on his alpha spark, his vitality. At best, it would strip the alpha spark away and destroy it. At worst, it would kill him.”

Stiles shook his head. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t selfish enough to kill Derek to bring himself back to life. “No. We’re not doing that.”

“Lydia,” Peter said, his voice echoing through the room. “Take my hand off of Derek’s arm.”

“What!” Stiles squawked, grabbing for Peter’s shoulders. “What the fuck, no! Lydia, don’t!”

Of course, she couldn’t hear him. She crouched at the edge of the hole, prying Peter’s fingers away from Derek’s arm.

“Peter, you can’t do this. I won’t leave you alone like this,” Stiles pleaded.

“You’ll find another way to bring me back.” Peter leaned in to kiss his forehead. “You’re clever. I know you’ll find a way.”

“After how long?” he argued, shoving Peter away. He didn’t want his affection, a sweet goodbye. He wanted to fix this. “We don’t know how long you can last like this, Peter! With no one? Nothing? You could drift off the same way I did. Hell, you probably _will_.”

Catching Stiles’s wrists in his hands, holding them firm, Peter said, “And it would be no less than I deserve.”

Stiles felt himself shaking, honest-to-god terrified for Peter, for the idea of being left alone in death. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, though he had a good idea. “What you deserve? Fuck, Peter! I – I’m not mad at you, okay? I don’t blame you for me dying. Not anymore. I _forgive you_.” He lunged in, pressing his lips to Peter’s, desperate to make him believe it.

This time, Peter pushed him away, and he looked broken, hollowed out and tired in a way Stiles didn’t recognize. “It was Laura, Stiles,” he said, soft.

“What?”

“The one that read to me while I was in the coma.” His voice cracked on the words. “It was Laura.”

And he’d killed her.

“Lydia,” Peter said, and Stiles grabbed for him again, not wanting to let him go, though he already knew – knew there was no way to change his mind now. “Turn the mirror back.”

“I’m going to get you back,” Stiles insisted as she walked to the mirror. “So don’t you fucking give up on me. Don’t you drift away, Peter, I swear to god. I’ll get you back.”

“I know,” Peter agreed, a brittle smile on his lips.

Lydia tipped the mirror.

* * *

  
  


The first breath ripped through him like a shard of ice through the chest.


	8. Instincts of Beasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles adjusts to being alive again and tries to help his friends tackle the kanima issue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note I've added the tags "overstimulation" and "sensory issues" as Stiles deals with those extensively in this chapter (having been understimulated and sensory-deprived in the previous chapters).

Before he died, Stiles had never taken the time to appreciate just how much _stuff_ happened in a living body.

The basic sensory goings-on, of course. His eyes not only processing the things he saw but shrinking back from flashes of light, straining in the dark, focusing, unfocusing. He had been able to hear in death, but the sounds seemed sharper in life, more immediate. He could almost feel the vibrations in the air as they passed from his ears to his brain.

Touch, he thought, was the worst – or at least the most overwhelming. The way his clothes brushed against his skin constantly, every step. The way the ground struck up against the bottoms of his feet, the rush of air on his face. Temperature. There was no escaping the goddamn temperature. Too cold where he was exposed, too hot where his clothes held his body heat against him. Aches and discomforts, minor but relentless. A stiffness in the neck. Muscles growing tired with overuse.

Smells. God, he had never paid much attention to smell before, except for the really foul ones. But everything had a smell, all the time. The smell of dirt, of car exhaust, of _himself_.

Beyond that, so many other little things he had never paid attention to before. Stiles could feel his own pulse _all the time_. Jackrabbiting with anxiety or just a low, steady thrum that echoed through his entire body. The constant expanding and contracting of his chest as he breathed. The feeling of the air moving into him, out of him. Relentless. The gurgle of his stomach. Thirst. Hunger. Full bladder. Itchy back. A thousand signals, constantly bombarding him from within.

“What can I get for you, honey?” the waitress asked.

Stiles flinched at her voice, but forced himself to settle. Jean. Her name was Jean. He could probably write a book on what he knew about Jean, but she smiled blandly at him like a complete stranger.

“Uh, a waffle, please,” he said. Stiles hesitated, then reached for the upside-down coffee cup in front of him, turning it over. “And a cup of coffee?” He had never really liked coffee, but that had been the plan. His and Peter’s plan.

Waffles and coffee.

Jean smiled sweetly at him, though her eyes betrayed her weariness. Five days a week on night shift, two little ones at home. Everett and Alexis. “Sure, I’ll get that for you right now,” she said. She made a quick trip to the coffee station, then came back with the pot to fill his cup.

“Thanks,” Stiles murmured. He waited until she had disappeared back behind the counter before pressing the tips of his fingers to the side of the cup. He pulled them back quickly, hissing at the heat.

Staring into the steam as it rose from the coffee, Stiles murmured quietly so Jean wouldn’t hear. “It’s a little sour. The inside of my mouth. It tastes bitter.”

* * *

  
  


At first, when he opened his eyes, all Stiles could see was darkness, the suffocating feeling of the tarp close over his face. His arms jolted into frantic movement, instinctive, as he clawed the cloth away from his face, shoving it down. He sat up, panting, his heart racing in his chest.

“ _Stiles_?” Lydia gasped. She knelt on the floor between him and the hole, between him and Peter’s corpse. In front of her, Derek lay still, his eyelids twitching like they wanted to open but couldn’t.

“Fuck. Fuck, okay,” he said, forcing himself to focus. Get his head together. “Okay, we have to get Derek out of here.”

“What? Stiles, what is going on here?” she demanded, standing up. “Where have you been? You’ve been missing for over a month. Everyone thinks you’re – _oh_.”

Stiles saw as the realization settled on her face. She looked at Stiles, still covered in black ooze and rabbit blood, half tangled in a dirt-caked tarp. Then she looked at Peter’s corpse through the hole in the floor. Then she looked at Derek. Finally, she lifted her own hands, seeing the rabbit’s blood that stained them to the elbows.

“Oh my god, you were _dead._ ” Lydia’s voice wavered as she spoke. She fell back to her knees.

“It’s a really long story,” Stiles said, working the tarp the rest of the way off. “I promise, I’m going to explain everything, okay? For now, I really need your help. Can you help me?” He stood, finding his legs steadier than he’d expected. God, his heartbeat felt so _strong_.

She took a moment to compose herself, but Lydia nodded eventually. “Yes. What do we need to do?”

Stiles offered her a hand and helped her back to her feet. “Derek can’t be here when he wakes up." He lifted one of Derek’s arms. “Grab his other hand and, for god’s sake, _lift with your legs._ ”

* * *

  
  


The bell over the diner door chimed softly. Stiles winced and looked up from his waffle. There stood his father, still in his pajama shirt, though he had pulled on a pair of jeans and his uniform jacket. He waved a hand at the waitress, then headed over to the booth.

“Sorry, dad time,” Stiles murmured. He didn’t know for sure if Peter was there, but if he was, Stiles didn’t want to be rude.

His dad slipped into the opposite side of the booth. “I got your note,” he said. “How’s the waffle?”

Stiles looked down at his plate. He’d barely made a dent in it. “It’s too sweet,” he admitted. Stiles had always had a horrible sweet tooth before.

The waitress came over, and his dad turned his own coffee cup over for a fill, nodding and murmuring thanks. Once she had retreated again, he said, “The note said you couldn’t sleep?”

Stiles shook his head. “It feels weird now. I couldn’t, you know. Before. It just wasn’t a thing.”

His dad took a slow sip of coffee. “Are you afraid you won’t wake up?” he asked, gentle.

“No it’s...” The closest thing to sleep that he had experienced in death had been his near-miss with oblivion, spiraling off into non-existence. It felt too much like that. But Stiles didn’t know how to even begin explaining that. “...it’s not that.” His throat went tight, the burn of tears behind his eyes, too intense and warm, and he could feel the blood pooling in his face for a flush, his heartbeat speeding up.

“Stiles, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. And, to be honest, I have no idea how to help with this. Can you just… just tell me what’s going on in your head right now?”

Stiles tried to swallow down the emotion, or at least these intrusive physical symptoms of it. Where the hell could he start? How could he explain the desolation he’d felt on the other side? Or the comfort he’d found with Peter? Or how terrified he felt, knowing Peter was on his own? How he had no idea how to resurrect him, but he _had_ to. How he had started to fear that the afterlife was a terrifying void of nothingness for eternity, and if that was true, his mom was there already.

What came out of his mouth instead was, “This table is too cold.” The words blurted out unexpectedly, and Stiles’s father frowned in confusion, so he hurried to explain. “And the syrup is too hot. And this shirt itches, and the coffee machine makes this humming noise, and it never stops, and the lights are too bright, and this booth is hard and it’s pressing against my legs and my neck hurts, and my shoes are too small, and sometimes my chest gets all tight and I realize that I forgot to breathe and I have to _breathe_ now or my chest gets all tight, and -”

He cut himself off and sucked in a breath that rattled as he drew it in.

His dad reached across the table, then seemed to hesitate. “Can I...” He nodded toward Stiles’s hand, waiting for a nod of agreement before placing his own on top of it. “You’re going to have to take this slow, Stiles,” he advised softly. “You can take all the time you need to get readjusted.”

Except he couldn’t. Peter didn’t have the time.

“Okay,” Stiles said.

* * *

  
  


“So you were just letting him brainwash me?” Lydia demanded, her hands tightening around the steering wheel.

Stiles made a wide, wild gesture and accidentally smacked his hand against the window of the car. “To bring the two of us back to life, Lydia! It was literally a life or death situation! Besides, you were never in any danger. Except, you know, when you wandered into the woods naked, but _we fixed that_.”

“That was _you_?” Her voice was getting higher with every outburst of indignation.

“No, now, _technically_ that one was on your banshee powers,” Stiles insisted, holding a finger up between them. “They went all into wack because too many people died in one night.” He sat up straighter, eyes on the road. “Turn up here. It looks like a dead end, but it goes through to the depot.”

Lydia did as he instructed, though she took the turn a little harder than necessary, and Stiles heard Derek’s limp body slide into the door. He winced in sympathy and hoped it was the foot-end of his body that had made the impact.

Probably not.

“And exactly how is it I’m meant to have become a banshee?” she asked, her incredulity coming across as a sort of threat.

“You didn’t become one. You _are_ one. It’s genetic or something. But your powers were latent until Peter bit you.” She shot him a glare, and Stiles quickly added, “Which was definitely not a great thing for him to do, admittedly! But, devil’s advocate here, if he didn’t, _I would still be dead_.”

The car screeched to an abrupt halt outside of the rail depot, and Derek noisily slipped into the foot well of the back seat.

Lydia looked over her shoulder at him and frowned. “You did say they heal faster, right?”

* * *

  
  


Derek became more coherent as Stiles and Lydia settled him onto the sleeping roll he apparently called home. He grabbed Stiles by the wrist to keep him from pulling away, drawing a finger through the black crust where the ooze had dried on his shirt.

“We can talk about this later,” Stiles told him. “I have to go home.”

Lydia’s questions on the way to his house mostly revolved around Derek and his pack and werewolves in general. He didn’t dare get into the kanima issues tonight, though they would have to soon enough.

He waved her off from the front step of his house, then turned to stare at the door, heart thudding erratically in his chest. Stiles didn’t have his keys, assumed they were at the bottom of a lake with his Jeep. So he knocked.

It took a long time for his dad to answer the door, though Stiles saw the light go on upstairs, then the one in the hallway. The door opened, and they both stood silent for a long moment, staring at one another.

“Hi Dad,” Stiles whispered.

In a second, his father’s arms had wrapped around him tight, pulling him in and squeezing. The feeling overwhelmed Stiles at once, but he didn’t pull away, just let himself drown in the onslaught of sensations. His dad’s sleep shirt against his chin, breath against his ear, his warmth, his strength, the immediately familiar smell of him.

After what felt like an eternity, his dad pulled back, tugging Stiles inside and closing the door behind him. “Where have you been?” he asked, voice soft. The words should have come out as an angry accusation, something to go with _‘don’t you scare me like that again’_. They had crossed that level of severity by several magnitudes, though. “Stiles, I thought you were dead.”

Stiles realized in an instant that he had been running on pure adrenaline from the moment he drew that first breath tonight. He realized, because all at once it abandoned him. The dam broke, and he found himself sobbing, falling forward against his father’s chest.

Strong arms came around him again, but gentler this time, a hand smoothing over his back while Stiles struggled to drag in breath through tears. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “Son, whatever it is, we’ll figure it out, alright? You can tell me. I know about the werewolves. I know about all of it.”

He couldn’t get a response out, tried but managed nothing but a couple of hiccups through tears. Finally, his dad pulled him back to look him over in the dim light filtering through from the hallway. “Are you hurt?”

Stiles shook his head.

“What’s this stuff all over you? Is this blood?”

Stiles nodded.

His father blew out a slow breath. “Okay. Let’s start with getting you cleaned up. How about that?”

After Stiles had showered, after he had scrubbed the grave dirt and the black dried blood and the fresh rabbit blood from his skin, after he got dressed in his softest sweats that still, somehow, felt too abrasive on his skin, after he and his father had settled at the kitchen table with its too-hard chairs and the humming of the refrigerator incessant, Stiles finally looked his father in the eye again.

“Why don’t we start with the night of the formal,” his father suggested. “The last place anyone saw you was at the dance. Where did you go?”

“Peter -” Stiles began, and the word caught in his throat as he realized that _Peter_ , his Peter who he had become so attached to over these past weeks, was still Peter Hale to the rest of them. A monster. A murderer who they put down. He licked his lips. “Peter Hale attacked Lydia.”

“I know that part,” his father agreed. “He bit her. They thought it would turn her, but it didn’t.”

“He took me after,” Stiles said, eyes dropping to the table. “In my Jeep. He wanted information on Scott, and then he offered me the bite. I said yes.”

A long silence followed, and Stiles finally had to look up again. He found a panicked, vaguely horrified expression on his father’s face. “Stiles, are you…?”

Stiles shook his head. “No. If the bite doesn’t turn you – unless you’re Lydia, she’s special – but for _humans_ , if the bite doesn’t turn you, it kills you.”

His father frowned, brow furrowed. “So you didn’t turn. Does that mean you’re like Lydia? You’re special?” he asked.

He shook his head again. From the confusion on his dad’s face, he could tell he wasn’t putting the pieces together, couldn’t fathom the thought despite how sure he’d been in the past few weeks that Stiles was dead. “Dad, I died,” he said. “That black stuff that was on me, it was my own blood. I died, and Peter buried me, and then he died, and -”

“Wait, wait, wait,” his dad said, waving his hands. “I’m sorry, but I have heard a lot of crazy stuff since you disappeared. Werewolves, alphas, hunters, kanimas. But you are alive. You’re sitting right in front of me. You -” He reached over and grabbed Stiles’s wrist, too hard, too abrupt. “I can feel your heart beating, son,” he said, and Stiles could feel it, too. He hadn’t been able to stop since he came back.

He resisted the urge to pull his arm away. “Lydia dug me out of my grave last night,” he said. “She resurrected me using a spell that Peter and I taught her as ghosts. I’ve been here, haunting Beacon Hills, trying to figure out a way to get back. I was here when Scott and Derek told you about werewolves. I was here while you were calling hospitals and morgues looking for me. I was here when you polished off that last bottle of whiskey two nights ago, dad.”

His dad let go of his arm, sitting back with a horrified expression on his face. He said nothing for a minute, then slowly said, “And Lydia...”

“Is a banshee,” Stiles answered. “She has powers related to life and death. That’s why she could hear me and Peter and do the spell.”

“And Peter Hale is back now too?”

Stiles winced, looking down. “No.” His voice caught in his throat, a lump settling there. His eyes burned. “He didn’t make it,” he croaked out.

“I don’t know what to say,” his dad admitted, and Stiles nodded. That was fair.

“I think you knew I was dead from the first day,” he said quietly. “You didn’t want to, but you did.”

Outside the kitchen windows, the sky had started to go a lighter shade of purple, lilac above the treeline. Stiles suddenly felt unprepared to face the light of day, but he didn’t think he could sleep either. “My phone and my Jeep are gone,” he said. “Bottom of a lake. I need to contact Scott, though.”

“I’ll message him on my phone,” his dad said. “We can get you a new phone today. After we go to the station and tell them… god, we’ll need to tell them something.”

Stiles and Peter had talked about this a fair amount. It didn’t matter for Peter, of course, but half the town had been papered with Stiles’s Missing Person signs. “We tell them Kate Argent locked me up in a bunker, somewhere out in the woods. She left me with canned food and water, but it took weeks to break my way out. I got lost in the woods coming back, and I can’t find the bunker again.” His dad looked surprised at the suggestion, so he added, “They won’t bother looking when the suspect is already dead.”

“That… is pretty good,” his dad agreed.

“I had a lot of time to think about it,” Stiles reminded him. “Death is kind of boring.”

* * *

  
  


That afternoon found Stiles back at the rail depot, this time with a whole rag-tag team of them: Derek and his betas, Scott, Lydia, and Danny. What might have been called a pack in a more functional scenario but was, at the very least, a group of pieces on the same side of the board.

“So you’re like a zombie,” Isaac said, giving Stiles a judgmental once-over.

Stiles shot him a glare, “Yeah, don’t worry, buddy. Zombies eat brains and you don’t have any.”

Derek, leaning against a brick wall in a shadowed corner with his arms crossed over his chest, hadn’t said anything since Stiles started his explanation. Finally, he cut through the bickering with a harsh tone. “Peter didn’t come back with you, though.”

Feeling subdued by the line of questioning, Stiles settled and shook his head. “No. He’s still a ghost.”

“So he could be here right now, listening in on all of this,” Derek said, stepping out of the shadows. He still looked a bit worse for wear from the spell.

Stiles shrugged a shoulder. “He probably is.” He didn’t know for sure, but he had assumed Peter had been following him all day. He hadn’t been alone long enough to talk to him without looking like a total nutjob, though.

“And he could come back, the way you did,” Derek continued, and Stiles could hear the menace in his voice, the apprehension. His betas fixed their attention on their leader, hung on his every word. Stiles had no idea how to go about changing their minds on Peter, but he knew he had to try.

“Not the same way,” Stiles answered. “The spell we did was only meant for the March full moon, so that won’t work again until next year. But I’m going to find another way. I’m going to bring him back.”

Every eye in the room snapped to him, sharp and alarmed by his words.

“Peter brought me back,” Stiles said, words less confident than he’d hoped they would be. “I’m going to bring him back, too.”

“Stiles,” Scott said softly, taking a half-step toward him in concern. “Peter is crazy. He would have killed us all. He attacked Lydia. He killed _you_.”

Stiles shook his head. “He offered the bite, and I said yes.”

Scott sighed, like he was sad for Stiles. “We killed him for a reason. He’s a monster.”

“As an alpha he was, but not...” Stiles started to argue, then sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his hair. “Anyway, I’m not asking for your permission to do it and that doesn’t even matter right now. You all need to deal with this kanima situation first.”

Again, they all looked startled. Everyone except Lydia. She had driven him to the depot again, and he had filled her in on the kanima situation so she would be on equal footing with the rest of them.

“What?” He held out his arms. “You think I haven’t been watching what’s going on with you all? Dead people can’t play video games, and your drama is pretty much the best thing on TV in this town.”

Erica looked to Derek, then back at Stiles. “We know the kanima is Jackson and he’s being controlled by Matt Daehler,” she offered.

“Yeah, I know, you’re welcome,” Stiles snapped. “I’ve been dropping hints to you people for weeks. How do you think you got the bestiary?”

Scott frowned. “It fell off Gerard’s keychain at school.”

“ _You’re welcome,”_ Stiles enunciated purposefully.

“Well, Casper, now that you don’t have to poltergeist the information to us, any new information to share?” Isaac asked, lifting his eyebrows expectantly.

Stiles rolled his eyes. He had a feeling he was not going to get along with this asshole. “Yes, actually. Peter said that the kanima is a creature with no name, no identity. It has no pack, no one it belongs to. That’s why it seeks a master.” In between preparations for the resurrection, he and Peter had spent plenty of time reading up on kanimas and discussing the bits and pieces that Peter remembered from other lore. “You know who grows up not belonging to anyone?”

Derek’s eyes dropped to the floor. “An orphan. Like Jackson.”

“Right. So the way that we save Jackson is to play at his human connections. People he feels close to.”

Danny huffed a sigh. “Jackson has been pulling away from everyone ever since he was bitten. He’s barely spoken a word to me in weeks.”

“He’s been pulling away from everyone else while he forms a bond with Matt, his master,” Stiles said. “We either need to break his bond with Matt or we need to use a bond that’s even stronger. A bond with someone he loves.” He looked over at Lydia.

“He dumped me,” Lydia insisted, holding a hand up in protest, “and he was a real asshole about it, too.”

Derek stared at Lydia, then lifted his eyes to Stiles. “And this information is coming from Peter?”

“Like it or not, he knows way more about this stuff than any of you do,” Stiles defended.

“For all we know, this is part of an elaborate plot to use the kanima to weaken me so he can become the alpha when he’s resurrected,” Derek sighed. “Peter plays the long con. I can’t trust information coming from him.”

Stiles’s jaw clenched as he remembered how Derek had howled in pain last night, how immediately Peter had Lydia move the mirrors. “Listen, if he wanted you to lose your alpha powers, they’d be gone,” he snapped. “He could have been resurrected with me last night, but it would have either killed you or taken your alpha spark, so why don’t you stow the paranoia!”

Derek scowled right back. “What the hell is that -”

“Guys, do you hear something?” Scott said, raising his voice above theirs.

Everyone went silent, the werewolves tilting their heads as they listened.

Several things happened at once. The werewolves cried out, curling forward and covering their ears. Two loud bangs sounded from above and canisters dropped into the depot, smoke pouring out of them. The sound of rapid gunfire came from above, too, deafening.

Stiles fell to the ground, covering his head. Someone grabbed him around the middle, hauling him across the ground so his elbows and knees scraped on the cement. The smoke stung his eyes, felt smothering in his mouth as he tried to pull in air and found nothing but a foul, burning chemical taste. Behind, he could hear snarling, more gunfire.

Whoever had him flung Stiles forward, then a door slammed behind them. Stiles opened his eyes cautiously, blinking in the dark. He couldn’t stop shaking, his pulse thundering in his veins. Someone lay on the ground beside him, breathing heavily. Above him, two sets of golden eyes shone down at him.

“What is going on?” Lydia’s voice hissed from beside him.

“Hunters,” Scott said, his voice muffled by fangs. “Isaac, did you see who got Danny?”

Almost as soon as he said it, the door opened in an overwhelming flash of light and smoke that had Stiles cowering back again. It slammed shut.

“Danny’s shot,” Erica said.

Stiles felt a jolt of panic before he heard Danny grit out, “I’m alright. It’s my arm.”

“Stiles, you’re shaking,” Lydia said, hands settling on his shoulders, and Stiles wrenched back from her touch before he could stop himself. God, he couldn’t control his body, couldn’t catch up with how quickly everything was happening. He desperately wished Peter was there.

 _Think of the game,_ Peter would tell him. _Where are your pieces?_

“Where are Derek and Boyd?” he asked.

“Giving us a head start,” Scott said. “We have to go, run out through the tunnels.”

“No,” Stiles said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Derek is compromised, and we’ve left both of our heavy hitters out there.”

“If we wait for them, the hunters will be right after them,” Scott argued.

Stiles pushed himself to his feet. He found it somehow easier to orient himself in the dark. It felt a bit like walking into solid dirt behind the bookshelves in the cellar. He pulled out the flashlight on his phone and shone it around the room, fighting the urge to wince back from the glare. He stopped on the sight of a fire alarm pull. “You three go get them, give them some backup and get some distance between you all and the hunters. Forty seconds, and I’ll set off the alarm and sprinklers. Go. Now.”

The door opened again, three shadowed figures moving back into the smoke.

“Lydia, Danny – there should be another tunnel in here that leads to the tunnels. Go ahead and stay on the tracks until we catch up with you.”

Lydia started to protest, “Stiles, you don’t seem -”

“GO!”

Twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven…

One of their phone flashlights went on, moving away, and then a door on the other end of the room opened and closed.

Thirty eight, thirty nine…

Stiles pulled the alarm, falling back to cover his ears as it roared to life, the high pitch whine of it vibrating through his head. He could hear the hiss of sprinklers outside. He turned, flashlight aimed forward as he sprinted off in the direction Lydia and Danny had disappeared. Behind him, the door opened again, and he could only pray that it was the pack after him, not the hunters.

They caught up to him as he pushed through the door that lead onto the tracks. “Stiles!” Scott said, jogging up alongside him.

Stiles looked over as he slowed, barely able to make out his silhouette in the dark. “Let me get on your back, I’m gonna slow you down otherwise.”

Scott ran a bit ahead, bending forward so Stiles could hop onto his back. He was wet from the sprinklers, soaking through the front of Stiles's shirt and pants immediately. Ahead, he could see the phone light from Lydia and Danny. “Grab them, too,” he said, whipping his head around to look at the other wolves. “Isaac, grab Danny. Eri – where’s Boyd?”

“They got him,” Erica said, voice thick with emotion. She sniffed. “I’ve got Lydia.”

They hardly hesitated as they caught up to the other two, Isaac scooping Danny up over his shoulder and Erica catching Lydia bridal-style.

Every step jarred Stiles. He could feel it in his spine, in the ache of his arms as he held onto Scott, the squeeze of his legs around his middle. Scott felt too warm and wet against his stomach, a chafe where their bodies rubbed together. Stiles closed his eyes to block it out, try to focus. He couldn’t hear hunters following them down the tunnel, which meant they had either retreated with their capture or they were planning to head them off at the mouth of the rail tunnel.

Derek, apparently, had been thinking the same. “Here, there’s a tunnel that leads -”

“The one to the school is caved in,” Stiles told him, unfolding his mental map of the tunnel systems under Beacon Hills. He had spent enough hours exploring them. “Take the one toward the distillery.”

“That’s this one,” Derek assured him. He wrenched open a rusted door, and Stiles was fairly sure he’d just ripped it out of its frame to open it.

About halfway into the tunnel, Stiles tapped on Scott’s shoulder. “Come on, we can slow down. We don’t actually want to leave through the distillery.” Scott let him down, and Stiles waved for them to follow him toward the cellar library. That would take them to downtown, to the sheriff’s station and his dad.

* * *

  
  


Stiles ordered a side of toast for himself and watched his dad work on the rest of his waffle. It didn't even occur to him to complain about his dad having that much sugar until he was practically finished. He only had a couple of bites left when his phone started to ring.

“Sheriff speaking,” he said, then went quiet, his face grave. “Where?” A pause. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up and looked across the table at Stiles. “Well, it sounds like you don’t have to worry about Matt anymore,” he said softly.

“What happened?”

“They found his body this morning, in the river. He was drowned.” His dad put a few bills down on the table, then left.

Stiles chewed on his lip, looking at the seat next to him in the booth. “The king’s not dead,” he said. “He’s castled.”

This was Gerard’s work.

* * *

  
  


Despite being nowhere near the field, Stiles managed to cause quite the stir at the lacrosse game that night. His dad had said he didn’t have to go back to school until he “felt ready,” but his little game of chess wasn’t waiting for him to get anywhere near “ready.”

“So let’s talk this through,” Stiles muttered to himself, hunched forward against the steering wheel of the squad car. His dad had driven them both to the game, but Stiles had gone back to the car on the pretext of getting his gloves. Really, he just couldn’t take the crowd at the moment. Once things started going off the rails, sure, he’d get that adrenaline rush, he’d make it work. Keep it together until they got through it. Sitting and waiting for the hammer to fall, though?

It was too cold, the metal bleachers painfully icy to the touch. The noise of the crowd, the people bumping into him, asking where he'd been and how he was, the blaring of coach’s whistle, the stink of mud and athletic gear, the awful contrast between darkness of night and blinding field lights.

In the car, he tried not to focus on the beating of his own heart, the throb of his elbows and hands where he’d scraped them on the floor the night before. The bruises on his knees. His chest felt tight, and Stiles reminded himself to breathe.

“God, I hope you’re actually in the car with me and I’m not just talking to myself like a crazy person,” he groaned, leaning back against the seat. Stiles pinched his arm, trying to bring himself back to focus.

“Right. Talk it through. Allison is on the other side of the board. Unless we get a chance to explain how her mom got bit – but there’s no good way to do that, is there? Fuck. She’s a minor piece right now. Set her aside. Gerard and the Jackson, they’re making the moves right now, and Jackson has a clear shot at a whole lot of people right now. Made a direct move against Scott’s mom, but he could go after anyone at the game tonight. And Gerard is too closely guarded to go after him directly.”

Headlights on the other side of the parking lot flashed through the window, and Stiles winced back, squeezing his eyes shut.

“He’s got Boyd. Erica and Derek are freaking out trying to get him back – they’re completely sidelined. Danny's healing from getting fucking shot. So we’ve got Isaac, Scott, Lydia, my dad, and me.” He glanced over at the passenger seat, where he imagined Peter would be. “And I don’t know if we even have me, honestly. My head is fucked up right now, Peter.”

He blew out a breath and focused on the board again. “Right. I’m thinking too immediately. Gotta think three steps ahead. He’ll use Boyd to lure in Derek and Erica. Allison wants Derek dead, but Gerard won’t let it happen until he gets the bite. And Jackson… fuck, Gerard knows everything he needs to about kanimas. He’ll know about the alpha form, he’ll know how to get Jackson transformed. Once that happens…” He shook his head and curled forward, hands gripping the back of his head. “Fuck!”

Then, unpleasant and desperately relieving all at once, he felt a chill emanate from his back, an unsettling feeling that had to be Peter trying to touch him from the other side. Stiles immediately felt tears burning at his eyes, choking on the emotion as it hit all at once.

“I miss you so much.” He felt a tear slip down his nose, hot, and sniffled. “Peter, I don’t know what I’m doing. I need you.”

Stiles let himself wallow in it for a long time, probably too long, but he didn’t have it in him to fight it. Scott could handle things on the lacrosse field. Finally, he sat up, wiping at his eyes. He took a deep breath. Opening the door, he met the wash of cold wind on the other side with gritted teeth and got out of the car. “Right. Back to work,” he said.

Pain shot through his whole body, starting at the small of his back and radiating outward, electric. His knees buckled, and everything went dark.

* * *

  
  


The basement came into focus in stages. First, cold, the hard press of the ground against his side, his face. Pain, aches that radiated through his whole body. The taste of blood. The sluggish thump of his own heart, the rattle of his breathing. The low hum of an electric current. Soft, muffled groaning. The smell of dirt. Urine.

Stiles opened his eyes and saw dirt in front of his face, bricks across the room, out of focus. Painstakingly, he raised his head and found men’s feet in sneakers, the heels raised off the ground. Above them, legs in jeans, a thick torso, a face. Boyd. His mouth had been covered in duct tape, and he looked like he had been crying, terrified and in pain. His arms had been tied above his head.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, blinking as he tried to push up onto his hands and knees.

“If you are a wolf, you’re a weak one,” said Gerard from above him, behind him. “That will happen when your alpha dies. And I don’t suppose you’ve had time to make yourself a place in Derek’s pack this quickly.”

Stiles tried to get up, but his arm gave out. Instead, he flopped over to sit, facing Gerard. The old man had a long metal cattle prod in his hand. “Fuck you,” he rasped. “Kate took me. She locked me -”

“In a bunker in the woods,” Gerard laughed. “Yes, I heard that little story. It makes about as much sense as Matt Daehler having caused all those deaths by himself. Police reports in this town are hardly to be trusted.” He took a step forward, the cattle prod sparking.

Stiles’s whole body felt weak, wrung-out. He didn’t think he could survive another jolt. God, it would be just his luck to be resurrected and end up dead again within forty-eight hours.

“So tell me, Stiles. Because we’ve had some strange luck with werewolf bites in this town. How did your bite turn out? A mysterious immunity, like Miss Martin? Or did you become something far more dangerous, like Mr. Whittemore?”

Gerard lunged forward with the cattle prod, and Stiles rolled himself to the side, barely dodging it as it struck the dirt floor. His chest heaved with that tiny bit of effort, heart thudding erratically. “I’m not!” he yelled. “I’m not anything!”

“Oh, you’re something,” Gerard said, grinning as he advanced again. “You’re either a beast to be taken to heel or you’re a nice reminder for Scott of what the stakes are here.” Stiles struggled to get his arms under himself, to get the leverage to move, but they wouldn’t hold him. Gerard raised the cattle prod again. “Let’s find out.”

This was it. He'd die, again. He'd become a ghost, again. A will to live, a violent death, a spark of magic. Back to that horrible feeling of nothingness, but back to Peter, too. They would find another way out of it, together.

Stiles closed his eyes, bracing for the blow, but instead he heard a yowl of pain. He opened his eyes and saw Gerard, rigid and trembling with the cattle prod pressed to his own chest, the electricity coursing visibly from the prod, through his body, to his hand, which was stuck in spasm around the trigger.

He started to fall, and Stiles did manage to scramble backward out of the way as Gerard fell toward him.

Where he had stood, there was Peter. A flickering, barely-there apparition with his lips twisted in a smirk. “You better get a move on,” he said. “Gerard started the alpha transformation tonight. There’s only one way to save Jackson now.”

And then he was gone.


	9. Aspirations of Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and his friends scramble to save Jackson before he transforms into an alpha kanima.

Before meeting him in Derek’s creepy train lair, Stiles had probably only interacted with Boyd on a handful of occasions. Boyd was two years ahead of him and wasn’t in any extracurriculars that Stiles was aware of. Nonetheless, staring up at him from where he lay on the ground, Stiles felt like they had become closer over the last few minutes. Shared agony did that to people.

“Okay, I’m gonna get you loose,” he promised. “Just as soon as I get up.” Stiles groaned, rolling over onto his hands and knees. It took a couple of tries, but he managed to get to his feet. “Jesus, you come back from the dead and it’s not two days before some geriatric psychopath takes twenty years right back off your life.”

Boyd made a few muffled noises under the duct tape. Stiles’s eyes followed the bindings along the beam overhead to the wall, where the wires connected to a box. “Right. Really into the electricity, isn’t he?” Stiles muttered.

As soon as he got the electricity shut off, he heard the wires snap and looked up to see Boyd tearing the duct tape off his mouth. “Thanks,” he muttered, rubbing at his wrists.

“Have you been like that since last night?” Stiles asked. When Boyd nodded, Stiles sighed and looked over at the still-twitching corpse of Gerard. “Fuck. Alright, we have to get out of here, and I am feeling… you know, like I got electrocuted. Are you okay?”

“Give me a minute, I will be,” Boyd agreed. He looked at Gerard, too, then back to Stiles. “What happened? Did his hand just slip? It looked like something pushed it.”

Stiles’s head snapped around. “You didn’t see him? Peter?”

“Peter the ghost?” Boyd shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t see any ghosts, man.”

Astral projection. It had to be. Peter was able to project his image just to Stiles, like he had been able to for Lydia. It didn’t work with just anyone, but maybe he could see because he had been on the other side of the veil before. Or maybe it was to do with his spark.

The spark.

Stiles groaned and rubbed at his head. It throbbed relentlessly, cutting into his thoughts before he could even get a good handle on them. His body felt like a well-placed poke to the ribs could collapse him like a house of cards.

“I’m good,” Boyd told him. “Let’s get out of here.” Without asking, he wrapped a hand around Stiles’s bicep to help him up the stairs. The touch unsettled Stiles, but he needed the assist.

The basement stairs lead into the foyer of the Argent house. They didn’t get two steps before he heard a click from above, and Boyd pulled him to a stop. There stood Allison, a crossbow aimed at them from the top of the stairs. Her father came up beside her.

Boyd started to shift into a defensive stance, but Stiles placed a hand on his chest to settle him. He lifted his chin, trying to channel that cold, calculating look that Peter used. “You might still have time to get Gerard to a hospital, but you won’t if you try to stop us,” he said.

The crossbow lowered, and the two of them scrambled down the stairs as Stiles and Boyd made their way outside.

* * *

  
  


“Okay, explain exactly what you’re seeing,” Stiles said, holding his phone up with one hand while he swatted at his dad with the other.

“Stiles, give me the phone!” the sheriff snapped, reaching for it blindly while Stiles leaned back against the door of the car.

“Could you watch the road?” Boyd pleaded.

On the phone, Scott said, “I’m seeing my mom flip out. Jackson’s covered in this gross jelly looking stuff, and – oh god! Oh god, he just moved.”

In the background, Stiles could hear Melissa screeching, “Scott, what the hell!”

Lydia and Isaac were frantically chanting, “Zip him back up, zip him back up!”

“You have to get him out of there,” Stiles said. “When he wakes up, it’s going to get really ugly, really fast. We need to get him somewhere empty, out of the way where -”

“We!” his dad shouted. “Stiles, don’t you even think about going to meet up with -”

“The old distillery – I’m gonna text you directions. We’ll meet you there.”

“Like hell we will!” his dad shouted.

“Dad, where are you going!” Stiles yelled back. “We need to head toward the warehouse district!” He ended the call, and the second he lowered the phone, his dad snatched it away.

“Stiles, I’m not sure if you remember, but you _died_. I lost you for six weeks. You’re not back for two days and you’re already getting kidnapped and nearly killed all over again, and I’ll be damned if I let you get anywhere near this stuff!”

“Jackson’s going to be a whole lot more dangerous if we let him transform, Dad! This is bigger than you and me, okay? I know what I’m doing,” Stiles argued.

“Stop sign,” Boyd said. “That was a stop sign.”

“Let the werewolves handle it, then,” his dad snapped. “Why does this have to be your job, Stiles? You were electrocuted. You’re hurt. And don’t think I don’t see that you’re still not right from coming back. You’re human, Stiles.”

“Kind of!” Stiles shouted, and his dad turned to stare at him in horror.

“ _Please watch the road!_ ” Boyd yelled.

The sheriff pulled the car off onto the shoulder and the car fell silent for a few tense moments.

Stiles blew out a breath and explained, softly, “The reason I was able to turn into a ghost instead of just dying is because I’m magic. Or, I have magic, I guess. I have a natural… I don’t know, _proficiency_ for magic. I didn’t know until I was on the other side.”

“Stiles, you’re human,” his dad insisted, eyes boring into him, hand still clenched around his phone. “You’re my son. I was there when you were born, I’ve been there your whole life. You’re human.”

Looking at his father out of the corner of his eye, Stiles said, “Dad, can you just trust me? For once? I’m the only one that knows how to fix this. Come with me if you want to make sure I’m safe, but I have to do this. They need me.”

Boyd’s phone started vibrating. “Erica, thank god,” he sighed when he answered. “You and Derek come get me the hell out of this car.”

The sheriff quietly passed Stiles his phone, and Stiles felt his shoulders drop an inch, relaxing. He twisted in his seat to look at Boyd. “Is she with Derek?” Boyd scowled at him but nodded. “Tell them to meet us at the distillery – he knows where it is. Oh! And tell them to pick up Danny on the way.”

“Stiles, Danny just got shot,” his dad protested.

“And he’s Jackson’s best friend,” Stiles insisted. “If we’re going to get through to him, we need all the help we can get.” He looked down at his phone and started tapping out the directions to Scott as they pulled out onto the street. Outside, the sky had gone a hazy pink, and Stiles realized dully that he hadn’t missed a single sunrise since he died.

One of these days, he was going to manage some decent sleep.

* * *

  
  


“Why does he keep moving like that?” the sheriff asked with a grimace. “That’s not normal. Even for werewolves, that’s not normal.”

Melissa gave him a sharply accusatory look. “How long have you known about this stuff?” she demanded. Scott had only looped her in after Jackson died on the field that night.

“It’s really gross in there, dudes,” Isaac explained to his packmates. “It’s like that aloe gel you get for sunburns? But, like, a lot of it, all over him.”

Stiles pulled Scott in for a hug. “Thanks for telling your mom, dude.” He knew it couldn’t have been easy, not only telling her that werewolves exist but that he _was_ one. “I have to get some stuff from the cellar, so just watch him, make sure he doesn’t get out of the bag.”

He jogged toward the cellar hatch and heard his dad calling behind him, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” as he ran to catch up. Stiles looked over at him, and his dad gave him a stern look. “You said I could stick with you to make sure you’re safe. I’m sticking with you.”

“Good, you can help me carry stuff,” Stiles agreed. He pulled open the hatch on the floor, revealing a wooden ladder into the dark, musty cellar. “Crap, that’s right. No lights,” he muttered. Stiles climbed halfway down, then dropped the rest of the way.

His dad followed a second later. “You were down here… before?”

“Yeah, but you don’t exactly need light to see when you’re a ghost,” Stiles explained. He turned on his phone flashlight and started to shine it around the shelves. He and Peter had discussed the sorts of herbs and spells that would be helpful in this situation. “Alright, petrified red oak,” he muttered aloud as he scanned the shelves.

“Like the tree?”

“It’s a protector and stabilizer,” Stiles explained. “Ha!” he declared as he spotted it. Stiles lifted out the jar and passed it to his dad. “This is so much easier when I can just pick these things up.” He continued scanning the shelves, his fingers dancing along the faded paper labels. “Come on. Cedar, cedar, cedar… there we go!” He passed that jar off as well.

“Is this what you were doing? Learning about this stuff?” his dad asked.

Stiles shrugged. “Yeah, a lot of the time. Mostly at night when everyone else was asleep and we weren’t. Peter knows a ton about magic.”

His dad didn’t say anything, so Stiles focused on the task at hand. He needed ambrosia for love to solidify the connections with Jackson and his friends. With Gerard potentially dead, he could be completely unattached when he woke, which would only encourage his transformation into an alpha.

“Anemone, amethyst…” He spotted the label that read ‘Ambrosia’ and snagged the little metal box off the shelf, stilling at how light it felt. Hesitantly, Stiles peeked inside. His stomach dropped as he shone his phone flashlight into the empty box. “No, no, no,” he mumbled, setting it back down and taking a couple of steps back. “No!”

He could sense his dad approaching, but he spun around to face the other side of the room, shouting, “Peter!” His chest felt tight, for once not because he’d forgotten to breathe. On the contrary, his breaths were coming short and fast in panic. He didn’t have _time_ for this. “Peter, it’s _fucking_ empty – I can’t – I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! You were supposed to _be here_. I wasn’t supposed to do all of this by myself!”

His dad murmured, “Stiles...” and he ignored him. The wolves upstairs could probably hear him, but Stiles didn’t care.

His eyes stung as he went on, hands shaking and chest heaving with panicked breaths. “I know you’re probably burned out from projecting, but I really, really need you to help me right now, because _I don’t know what to do_!” Stiles stomped his foot in frustration. “And there’s no time, and I can’t – I can’t do this without you, I don’t -”

“ _Stiles_ ,” his dad said more purposefully, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Stiles scrubbed a hand over his face, not in the mood to answer his dad’s questions about this particular brand of freak-out. “Dad, can you just -”

“Stiles, that jar over there moved,” his dad snapped.

His head snapped around, eyes wide. “What? Where? What jar?”

His father pointed it out, and Stiles strode over to grab it off the shelf. The label read _‘_ Toadflax,’ handwritten in looping script. Stiles blew out a breath and nodded. “Okay. Okay, I can do this.”

* * *

  
  


The others gave Stiles a wide berth as he knelt on the hard cement, mixing the toadflax and cedar ash together, stirring it with his bare hand. He closed his eyes, trying hard to block out the sounds of everyone around him, the sounds of Jackson twitching in the body bag. The musty smell of the distillery, the pain still rattling through his body from being electrocuted.

He focused instead on the feel of the powders in his hand, smooth and cool. Cedar, for transformation. Toadflax, in place of the ambrosia, for love.

“ _Magic is all about intent, force of will_ ,” Peter had told him on a quiet night in the cellar as they read through the book on magical energies. Or rather, as Peter read through it and translated the Early Middle English into plain speech. “ _The ingredients are there to guide that intent, but the will must come from the caster_.”

He remembered the way they had sat curled together that night, how Peter had stroked his neck with the back of his hand and while Stiles pressed his face into Peter’s shoulder. He thought about how desperate they had both been for connection, affection, someone to hold onto. When he thought about it like that, it was easy to understand how a kanima came to be. Stiles tried his best to project those feelings of belonging through his hand, into the powders.

He spread the powders around the body bag, and Jackson started to writhe more purposefully. When he closed the circle, it shone brightly, and Stiles could feel something pull from within himself, an energy.

“Is that going to keep him contained?” Derek asked. “Like mountain ash?”

Stiles shook his head. “Keeping him contained isn’t the point. Connecting him to the pack is the point. He’s your beta, Derek. You need to take care of him.”

Derek blanched, and Stiles saw his betas casting furtive glances at him, their own dissatisfaction with his alpha skills apparent on their faces. That came as no surprise, but Derek was going to have to get his shit together finally.

The zipper on the bag started to drag down. Stiles scrambled toward the box of petrified oak, plucking two pieces from it. “Danny, Lydia, take these. Just hold onto them. You’re going to need to talk to him, try to get through to him.” Stiles took a third piece and kept it tucked into his palm.

When Jackson emerged from his cocoon, he looked mindless, eyes unfocused as he rose to his feet. He seemed stuck in a sort of half-form, scales and eyes and claws but still somewhat human. He bared his teeth and hissed. He lunged toward Stiles, probably because he was nearest, but before Stiles could fall backward, Lydia stepped in front of him.

“Jackson!” she snapped, and he stopped short. She held the oak out in a trembling hand. “Jackson, I know you’re in there. Please. I know you can hear me. I need you to -”

He struck forward, swatting at her hand so the little piece of oak went flying across the distillery and Lydia fell to the side with a yelp.

Immediately, Danny stepped forward in her place. He had an arm in a sling, and Stiles could see him shaking with fear, but he didn’t back down. “Jackson, you’re my best friend,” he said firmly. Jackson hesitated again, head tilting to the side. “You’ve been my best friend since we were both a couple of idiot kids, and I care about you, okay? There are people that care about you, so you can’t leave us like this. You have to come back.”

Lydia rose again, standing at Danny’s side. For a moment, Stiles couldn’t tell what she was doing, her back to him, head ducked down. Jackson took a step toward them both, then to the side, toward her. She held out something small and metallic that caught the light. A key.

Jackson’s eyes cleared, and he said, “Do you still…?”

Lydia nodded, crying. “I do.”

As she stepped in to kiss him, Stiles turned and tossed the final piece of oak to Derek. “You’re his alpha, Derek,” he said. “Be an alpha.”

* * *

  
  


On the drive home, Stiles slumped against the door of his dad’s squad car, feeling completely wrung out. Maybe the magic had drained him or maybe the three nights without sleep. More likely the latter.

Derek had insisted that he and all of his betas go to Jackson’s house together to explain the situation to his parents. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, Stiles might have felt excited by the pleasant surprise on the other betas’ faces.

Melissa volunteered to drop Lydia and Danny at their homes, which left Stiles and his dad alone in the car. It felt like a heavy weight had settled over the two of them, and he found himself wishing Boyd was in the back seat to break the tension.

“What you did tonight was really something,” his dad said after long minutes of silence.

Stiles looked at him, took in the circles under his eyes, the tired slump of his shoulders. “Peter and I talked about it before,” he said softly. “That’s how I knew what to do.”

“And Peter was there tonight to help you.”

Nodding, Stiles fought off the clenching in his stomach, the tightness in his throat. He _missed_ Peter. He was scared for him, scared that everything he had done tonight might accelerate him toward the disintegration that Stiles had come close to. “He might be here.” Stiles didn’t know why he felt the need to say it. Maybe to reassure himself.

The sheriff glanced toward the back seat like he might see something, then turned back to focus on the road. “Well, if you are here, Peter… thank you. Thank you for taking care of my son.”

Stiles hadn’t expected that. Despite his weariness, he felt his lips tug up in a smile. “I’m going to get you back, Peter,” he murmured. He’d said it before, but it felt nice, being able to talk to him in front of his dad without feeling crazy. “I promise I will.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles slept for sixteen hours the day after they saved Jackson. He woke in the middle of the night, got himself a snack, then settled on his bed with his laptop, trying to find some sources on resurrection that he and Peter might not have had access to through books alone.

He talked to Peter the whole time, soft so he wouldn’t wake his dad. Around four in the morning, he felt himself start to drift, unable to focus on the words in front of him anymore. He hesitated, then typed into the search bar, _Sherlock Holmes free ebook_.

Sure enough, he found several copies of the various works. Stiles chewed on the edge of his thumbnail while he scrolled through. “Okay, I’m not sure which of these you like best, but… I guess I’ll just pick one.” He chose _The Red-Headed League_ and began to read it out loud. He wasn’t much of a narrator, but he’d gotten used to it when reading to Peter from Deaton’s utility room.

Stiles settled back against his pillows, laptop propped on his knees as he got into the rhythm of the story. “’ _As a rule,’ said Holmes, ‘the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling,’_ ” he read and snorted. “Yeah, that sounds like something you would say. I’m gonna get you a pipe when you’re back. Let you just cosplay and get it over with.”

A shiver ran through him, unsettling and a little unpleasant. Stiles smiled.

He must have fallen asleep while reading, because Stiles woke the next morning as his dad lifted the laptop off of him and set it aside.

“Sherlock Holmes, huh?” he asked.

“Peter likes it,” Stiles murmured, shifting and settling more comfortably onto his side.

* * *

  
  


Things settled down after that. The sheriff went back to work. Stiles went back to school and did his best to catch up in his classes. So did Erica and Boyd.

Jackson didn’t. His parents, understandably, had freaked out about the whole thing and wanted to send him overseas to get him away from “all of this.” In the end, Derek managed to change their mind. Instead, he sent Jackson to a pack a few hours north. Their elderly alpha, Satomi Ito, apparently had a knack for teaching damaged, bitten werewolves how to meditate.

Their lunch table had become more crowded than it was before Stiles died. Erica, Boyd, and Isaac. Scott, Lydia, Danny, and Stiles. Even Allison started sitting with them again, having made some tearful apologies after hearing the truth about how her mom was bitten. She sat at the end of the table, though, and could hardly look Danny in the eye, knowing she had gotten him shot. She had trouble looking Stiles in the eye, too. Her grandfather had died in her arms, long before the ambulance could arrive.

Coach had offered Stiles his spot back on the lacrosse team, what with Jackson and Danny out for the rest of the season, but Stiles didn’t take it. He didn’t think he could handle the roughhousing yet, the blare of the whistle, the stink of the locker room.

After school, he went to Deaton’s instead. The first time he showed up asking to go into Deaton’s back room, the vet had merely raised an eyebrow at him and said, “You know, it’s funny you should ask. I went in there a couple weeks ago, and the books were scattered all over the floor.”

He brought books up from the cellar library, though Peter had tried to knock them out of Stiles’s hands in protest. He probably didn’t like the idea of Deaton having access to his secret stash of knowledge, but, “Tough luck, asshole. Your secrets aren’t going to mean shit if you stay dead.”

* * *

  
  


“Hey, Stiles,” Scott greeted as he stepped into the back room of the clinic. His eyes scanned over the table Stiles had commandeered for his research. Deaton didn’t often join in the research unless Stiles had specific questions, but he hadn’t made any protests about Stiles ostensibly moving in and making himself at home.

Stiles had his laptop and four books spread out on the table, three on his side and two facing away on the opposite side, the pages of one slowly flipping by an unseen hand. Peter hadn’t been having much luck with that book, apparently.

Scott hesitated when Stiles didn’t respond, then added a sheepish, “Hey, Peter.”

“Hey, Scott,” Stiles answered, satisfied that Scott had at least attempted to be polite. He knew the others didn’t think about Peter the way he did, that they thought the whole thing was creepy and bizarre, but Stiles remembered what it felt like to be stuck in the veil, invisible and unacknowledged. He wasn’t going to let Peter go through that alone.

Stepping forward, Scott set a grease-soaked bag on the edge of the table. “Got you some fries.”

The tension melted away as Stile snatched up the bag. “Oh my god, thank you, thank you. You are the best. I’m fucking starving.”

“You didn’t have dinner yet?” Scott asked.

Stiles shook his head. “Kind of forgot. I found something last night right before my dad came and picked me up, and I kind of just needed to get back here and get into it, you know?” He crammed a curly fry into his mouth with a groan. “The best,” he repeated.

Scott grabbed a chair and pulled it over to the table, frowning. Stiles knew that meant a big, serious discussion, but he decided to enjoy his fries while he could. Scott gestured to the other end of the table. “What’s with the bunny?”

Stiles looked at the cardboard Easter bunny standing at the end of the table, a slightly deranged look on its face as it clutched a basket of eggs. “Got it at the dollar store,” he explained. “If Peter finds something useful, he can knock it over to get my attention.”

“That’s smart,” Scott said, then went quiet, awkward. He cleared his throat after a moment. “So you think you found something?”

“Ehh, maybe not,” Stiles admitted, waving a frustrated hand toward the books. “I thought maybe I could figure out a way to make the spell we did before work on any full moon. There’s nothing, you know, _unique_ about the powers of that moon, but it just sort of amplifies what’s already there. Threefold. So, pretty much, if we wanted to do the spell on another full moon, we’d need three alphas to get it to work.” He thumped his knuckles against the book and snorted. “Let me know if you find any extras laying around. Otherwise, we’re back to the drawing board.”

Scott fished a few fries from the bag and munched on them, glancing over as another page turned. He seemed desperate to say something, but apparently he wasn’t ready to come out with it just then.

Stiles gave him a curious look. “Don’t you have, you know, work to do? Deaton’s paying you to sit around?” he teased.

“I don’t have work today,” Scott told him, huffing in annoyance. “And even if I did, my shift would have started hours ago. It’s eleven o’clock, Stiles.”

“Shit, what?” Stiles pulled his phone from his pocket and cringed as he saw the missed calls and texts from his dad. “I had it on silent. Is he freaking out?”

Scott crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s working a double tonight. He asked me to pick you up and talk to you about this thing.”

“What _thing_?” Stiles asked, immediately going for the defensive.

Waving an arm at Peter’s chair, Scott snapped, “This thing! The Peter thing! The researching all night and not having a life thing, Stiles!”

He’d had a feeling it would go this way. Stiles felt anger surge in his chest. “You want to talk about not having a life, Scott? Because the only one here that doesn’t is Peter, and this _thing_ is to fix that.”

“You’ve been at it for a month, Stiles. You don’t do anything else. You don’t spend time with friends outside of school. You don’t even spend time with me unless you’re here. Even then, you hardly talk to me. Everyone’s worried about you, okay?” Scott placed a hand on Stiles’s shoulder, and it was clearly supposed to be comforting, but all Stiles could think was that Scott _still_ couldn’t get it through his head that Stiles had lingering sensory issues.

They had gotten better, but still.

Stiles shrugged off the touch. “Well, everyone should stop worrying about me and start worrying about Peter, okay? I have no idea how long he can last like this.” He gestured toward Peter, and he hated the way Scott looked at him, like he was crazy and talking about his imaginary friend, when Scott _knew_ , he _knew_ there was an actual person sitting there.

“Stiles, you’re obsessed,” Scott told him, trying to sound gentle.

Stiles thought he just sounded condescending as hell. “This is _literally_ a life-or-death situation, Scott!” he yelled, thumping a fist on the book in front of him.

“Yeah, and he’s already dead!” Scott shouted back, getting riled up in spite of his best efforts.

“Well, so was I!”

They both fell quiet, and Stiles could hear his own pulse hammering in his ears.

“You don’t know what it’s like, Scott,” he said, soft.

Scott sighed and slumped forward, elbows on his knees. “Because you won’t _tell me_.”

Stiles rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling a burn behind his eyes, throat tight. He still hadn’t found a way to talk about it, to explain. “You just… you have to trust me, okay? It’s bad. I can’t leave him like that, not after what he did for me.”

“Stiles, he’s the one that killed you in the first place,” Scott reminded him. “You don’t owe him anything. You definitely don’t need to make yourself crazy like this.”

“Fuck off, Scott,” Stiles huffed. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Scott sat up again, looking tired. “I can’t fuck off.” When Stiles shot him a warning look, Scott added, “I’m your ride, remember?”

* * *

  
  


By May, Stiles was no closer to finding an answer than he had been when he started. He was pretty sure the only reason he wasn’t actually failing classes was because his teachers thought he had been trapped in an underground bunker for a month and they felt bad for him. He had expected his dad to ground him – or at least yell at him – for the slipping grades. He didn’t. The sheriff walked on eggshells around Stiles, dutifully picking him up from Deaton’s every evening. He checked on him at night after he fell asleep reading to Peter.

Frustrated, Stiles found himself re-reading the book on astral projection. Peter hadn’t appeared to him again since the night he killed Gerard. He suspected that it had been too much exertion, the sort of thing he could pull off in the heat of the moment but not on a whim.

He read up on why banshees could perceive ghosts, their receptiveness. Deaton recommended some ingredients that could make him more receptive, more perceptive. Stiles began to carry them in a leather pouch in his pocket, but nothing happened for a few days.

The fourth day, he fell asleep with his clothes on while reading to Peter, the pouch still in his pocket.

“ _Stiles._ ”

He blinked awake slowly, half sure that he’d dreamed Peter’s voice.

“ _Stay still,”_ the voice urged. “ _Stay calm. Don’t open your eyes._ ”

Stiles closed them again and forced himself to relax, to slow his breathing. Receptive, right. Maybe his brain was just too busy during the day for anything to get through.

“ _Stiles, there’s something you need to know._ ” Stiles felt his heart flutter in his chest, hoping for some sort of declaration. Maybe it was crazy, but the more time he was forced apart from Peter, the more strongly he felt for him. Instead, Peter said, “ _Another pack has arrived in Beacon Hills. They’re a threat, and you need to be careful._ ”

“Who are they?” Stiles asked, barely trusting himself to move his lips without breaking the relaxed state.

“ _They’re an alpha pack._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments welcome, as always!


	10. Featureless Crimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles continues working on better ways to communicate with Peter. Trouble brews in Beacon Hills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for posting this one a little late! I got caught up in Valentine's shenanigans.
> 
> Warning for reckless self-endangerment in this chapter.

If someone had told Stiles a year ago that he would end up sitting in a forest meditating with _Jackson,_ of all people, he would have laughed in their face. He had come back to visit over Memorial Day weekend, and after hearing him talk about the progress he was making with Satomi, Stiles decided that maybe Jackson could help him with his receptiveness issue.

The alpha pack had made a single gesture to demonstrate their presence – a symbol carved into the door of the Hale house. Derek had been particularly salty about that, since it was one of the few parts of the house that might not have needed to be completely replaced if he decided to renovate.

Stiles knew he wanted to use the alpha pack to their advantage, but he was stuck in a waiting pattern until they finally showed themselves. In the meantime, he needed to do _something_ about this whole astral projection issue. It would allow Peter to communicate with him directly and, more importantly, he hoped that it would help to keep Peter more connected, more tethered to reality.

“I can hear you thinking,” Jackson complained, eyes still closed. He sat a few feet away from Stiles, legs crossed and palms pressed flat against the mossy earth.

“Yes, hello, I’m Stiles. I have ADD. Nice to meet you.”

Jackson finally opened his eyes, just to roll them as dramatically as he could. He looked different these days. The shallow abrasiveness Stiles had grown accustomed to in his expression now carried an undercurrent of introspection. It looked good on him.

“You’re not using the mantra,” Jackson said, and when Stiles opened his mouth to protest, he cut him off: “I know you’re not, because if you were, you wouldn’t be thinking so much. Come on, Stiles. Meditation isn’t just being quiet and sitting still. It’s actual work.”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m voluntarily sitting here being lectured by you,” Stiles griped.

“Do you want to talk to your boyfriend or not?”

Stiles’s jaw dropped open, and he felt his face flush, his heart start to hammer. He hadn’t told _anyone_ about him and Peter getting romantically involved. How the hell did Jackson know? Did everyone know? Oh, god, why didn’t anyone say anything? “What?” he squeaked, trying to protest. “We’re not… I mean, it’s not, like…”

Jackson’s face flitted through a number of expressions very quickly, as if unsure how it felt. It settled on disgust and horror. “Holy shit, Stilinski, I was _joking_. Seriously? Peter Hale?”

Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. He hadn’t known. But now he did.

With a snort and a disbelieving shake of his head, Jackson huffed, “Leave it to you to have a less pathetic sex life while you’re dead.”

Stiles flushed darker, suddenly very aware that Peter was probably nearby, listening to all of this. “Shut _up,_ Jackson. He’s -” He gestured toward the empty spaces of the clearing.

Jackson smirked. “Come on, if he’s half as smart as you say he is, he already knows what a pathetic virgin you were before.”

Still was, but Stiles couldn’t decide if it would help or hurt his cause to tell Jackson that they hadn’t actually gotten to the sex part. He kept it to himself. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? Because if you tell someone, they’ll tell someone, and _they’ll_ tell someone, and _eventually_ my dad will find out, and he’ll kill Peter the second he’s resurrected, okay?”

“Calm down,” Jackson sighed. “Christ, no wonder you can’t meditate.” He leaned back on his hands, stretching his legs out in front of himself. “No, I’m not going to tell anyone about your creepy, thirty-year-old dead serial killer boyfriend.”

“Are Buddhists supposed to be this judgmental?” Stiles asked.

“I’m not Buddhist, I’m just using the practices. I can be as judgmental as I want.”

“I really think you should consider conversion.”

Jackson laughed. “Man, you really know how to pick ‘em, don’t you? So what about your little crush on Lydia, then? Was that just for show?”

Stiles shrugged a shoulder. He honestly hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, too preoccupied with all of the other drama. “I dunno. Either I’m bisexual or Lydia’s just so perfect that anyone could fall for her,” he answered.

Pursing his lips in thought, Jackson tipped his head to the side, silently conceding the point. Then a little furrow appeared between his brows. He shook his head. “Anyway. Let’s try again.”

* * *

  
  


The meditation helped. He could, if he really worked at it, drop into a quiet mindset and hear Peter talking in the back of his mind. Except Peter usually wanted to talk business, talk about the alpha pack and the plan to use them for the spell. Planning talk got Stiles’s mind racing too fast, and before he knew it, he would snap out of the meditative state entirely.

“It sounds like you just suck at meditating,” Lydia commented, stabbing a cherry tomato with her fork. “You should ask Jackson if he’ll practice with you more.”

Danny snorted. “I believe his exact words were, ‘Meditating with Stilinski is like taking a bubble bath with a porcupine.’”

“That’s offensive,” Stiles protested.

“To porcupines,” Isaac added with his mouth full.

Stiles shot Isaac a glare. He’d had a headache all day, and proximity to Isaac wasn’t helping. “Anyway, I don’t think he’s planning on visiting again until next month. Come on, Lydia. Please?”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder with a huff. “Absolutely not. The two of you pulled your weird ghost voodoo on me for _weeks_ without my permission. I’ve paid my dues. If you want to talk to Peter, you need to do it yourself.”

“Lydia, I swear to _god_ , it won’t be like last time,” Stiles pleaded.

“Tell you what,” she replied, stirring the last of her lettuce through the dressing on the bottom of the salad bowl. “I’ll come with you to Deaton’s today and help you figure something else out. I’ll even translate the Latin.”

Last month, Stiles had spent every lunch period for a week trying to convince Lydia to translate the Latin books for him, and all she had done was gift him an English-Latin dictionary.

Stiles wrinkled his nose in a frustrated scowl, holding himself back from yelling at her about being unreasonable. He massaged his aching temples. “Fine,” he snapped. “Deal.”

“It’s not a deal if I’m getting nothing in return,” Lydia replied with a cold smile. “It’s a favor that I’m granting out of the goodness of my heart. You’re welcome.”

“I did save your boyfriend’s life,” Stiles reminded her.

Lydia sniffed. “We’re not dating anymore.”

Stiles turned to Danny, hoping to draw another reasonable person into the conversation. “This is my fault,” he said sarcastically.

Danny held up a hand, refusing to get involved. Instead, Isaac – the opposite of a reasonable person – jumped into the conversation in his place. “Actually, it’s Peter’s fault,” he explained. He had half a piece of pizza crammed into his cheek. “But since you’re Peter’s number one fan, she’s blaming you in his place.”

“How is them breaking up Peter’s fault?” Stiles demanded.

“They wouldn’t have broken up if Jackson hadn’t turned into a kanima,” Isaac said.

“Jackson wouldn’t have turned into a kanima if Derek hadn’t bit him,” Erica added, leaning in around Isaac to join the conversation. “And Derek wouldn’t have been able to turn him if he hadn’t killed Peter.”

“And Derek wouldn’t have had to kill Peter if he wasn’t a psycho killer monster,” Isaac concluded.

Boyd, who had been sitting silently beside Stiles for the whole conversation, sighed. “You know what I’m gonna do after I graduate?” he said. “I’m gonna sit at home and eat lunch by myself. In peace.”

Isaac’s head whipped around, and Stiles didn’t even need to look to know it was because Scott had arrived in the lunchroom. He’d been waylaid by Coach after class to discuss the upcoming game. Sure enough, as Stiles glanced over his shoulder, Scott came to a stop just behind him. “Hey, guys.” His nose twitched and a furrow appeared between his brows. “Stiles, are you sick?”

“What?” Erica leaned back in her seat to see around Isaac, looking Stiles over, as if she might have missed some obvious clue.

“He looks fine,” Isaac said.

Scott raised his eyebrows at them. “Seriously? Does Derek teach you guys anything?”

“Wolf training is on hold until after finals,” Boyd offered.

Erica nodded an affirmative. “And if you think Derek is harsh with wolf training, you don’t want to see him marking up an essay draft. It’s brutal.”

Scott rolled his eyes, though Stiles didn’t miss the approving little smile quirking the corner of his lips. They were all glad to see Derek stepping up on his alpha duties. “ _Anyway_ ,” he pressed on. “Stiles, are you okay? You smell like you’re coming down with something.”

Stiles shrugged a shoulder. “It’s just a headache.”

In a second, he had three hands on him – Boyd, Isaac, and Scott. He suspected Erica had only held off because she couldn’t reach.

“Seriously guys?” he griped, though he couldn’t help but relax as the pain melted away.

* * *

  
  


The pain drain kept the headache at bay through his next class, but by the time Stiles got to English, it had returned with a vengeance. He felt worn thin, shivery, a little sick to his stomach. Stiles hadn’t gotten sick since his resurrection, and he found himself caught off-guard by how _distracting_ the feeling of it was.

He settled into a desk and fought down a wave of nausea.

“Stiles?”

Shit, he hadn’t even realized he had sat behind Allison. They had kept distance between themselves in class by an unspoken agreement. Stiles glanced around the room, ready to get up and move.

“You really don’t look well,” she said before he could get up. Her brow pinched in concern, a well-glossed lower lip poking out. “You should go home.”

Stiles shook his head. “M’fine. I have to go to Deaton’s after school,” he mumbled.

“Stiles, you’re sweating,” Allison observed. “You probably have a fever. At least go to the nurse to get your temperature taken.”

He deliberated a moment before nodding and raising his hand. He really must have looked like death, because Mrs. Williamson took one look at him and said, “Go to the nurse.”

Halfway down the hall, he had to duck into the bathroom to heave up the remainders of his lunch. When he walked out of the stall, Scott stood by the sinks, hands twisting as he gave Stiles one of his best puppy dog impressions. “I smelled it,” he explained.

“The puke?”

“No – well, yeah – but I smelled you getting sick.”

Stiles waved a tired hand at him. “I’m on my way to the nurse. Allison talked me into it.”

“Okay, I’ll walk you,” Scott decided, holding the door open for him.

Too tired to argue about being babied, Stiles headed back into the hallway. “Ugh, you know Lydia is going to use this to weasel out of the research she promised to help with today,” he griped.

“One day off isn’t going to -” Scott caught himself, his teeth clicking as he shut his mouth.

“Isn’t going to kill me?” Stiles presumed, smiling despite the throbbing in the back of his skull.

Scott looked sheepish as he pushed open the door to the nurse’s office. “He needs to go home,” he announced, jerking a thumb toward Stiles.

The nurse frowned at him. “Yes he does,” she agreed.

“Do I seriously look that bad?” Stiles whined.

“Stiles,” said Scott, exasperated, “you look like de -” He caught himself again.

“Like death?” Stiles ventured.

Scott hesitated, then lifted his chin with a smirk. “Like a zombie.”

Stiles scowled at him.

* * *

  
  


By the time he got home, Stiles had descended into a thick haze of fever. His dad walked him up to his room, Stiles mumbling all the while that he was fine, he didn’t feel that bad.

“Alright, tough guy, I know,” his dad agreed mildly. “It’ll make me feel better, though, so let me help.”

And maybe he did feel pretty rough, because Stiles forgot to protest at being changed out of his clothes like a child until he was already in his pajamas and being ushered into bed. “I’m okay, Dad,” he murmured into his pillow, shivering.

His dad crossed the room and closed the blinds, though sunlight still filtered through the cracks, around the sides in long, slanting beams. Returning to the bed, he stroked the side of Stiles’s head, thumb tracing a path from his temple, then arching up over his ear. Stiles wondered if maybe his dad was a secret werewolf, because it soothed the headache almost immediately.

“Are you?” his dad asked softly.

“M’I what?” Stiles slurred.

“Okay.”

Stiles blinked his eyes open, not remembering closing them in the first place. Looking up, he could see the helpless concern creased in the lines of his father’s face. “I’m gonna be,” Stiles decided.

The corner’s of his dad’s mouth pressed up in a facsimile of a smile. “Okay,” he agreed. He bent forward and kissed Stiles’s head. “I’ll be right downstairs if you need me.”

Stiles huffed and pulled the blankets over his head, hunkering down in the darkness.

When he blinked his eyes open, the darkness slowly gave way, shapes appearing through the shadows. A wood-paneled wall. An old table. A bookshelf. He spun around to see the stairs behind him, eyes wide. The cellar. How in the hell did he get into the cellar?

Stiles went up the stairs, reaching for the doorknob to let himself back onto the street. His hand passed right through it.

“No. No, no, no,” he murmured. Stiles went back down the stairs and looked around the cellar. No lights. There were no lights on down here, but he could see. “ _Fuck!”_ he hissed.

He’d died. How the fuck had he died again? The fever? Had he been more sick than he’d thought and he’d just… just died like that? His head swam, and Stiles couldn’t remember ever feeling so hazy while he was dead.

Unless he was already heading toward the abyss.

Fuck, he had to find Peter. Stiles hit their other usual haunts. The diner, the veterinary clinic. When he got to his bedroom, he found Peter seated by the window, reading through one of the Sherlock books he’d left open on the floor.

“I think I died again,” he announced, loudly, by way of greeting.

Peter’s head snapped up, eyes wide in alarm. “Stiles?” He got to his feet, looking between Stiles and the lump on the bed where his body was still curled up.

“I don’t know what happened, I just – I went to sleep, and then I came to in the cellar and I’m _dead_.”

“No, no, no, that’s not possible,” Peter insisted, approaching him cautiously. “You were – you’re sick, but you’re _fine_. It’s a fever. You’re not dead.”

Stiles spread his arms wide. “Then explain the ghost thing!” He felt his thoughts starting to spiral into panic. “Oh my god, I can’t be dead again. I can’t. I’m nowhere near having a plan that can even bring you back, let alone both of us, and my dad – oh my god, my _dad_.”

A sound from the bed cut him off, and they both turned to watch as the lump under the covers gave a soft snort and shifted.

Peter touched his shoulder tentatively at first, then more firmly, squeezing. “Dead people don’t do that,” he said, pointing at the bed.

From the depths of his panic, Stiles realized that this was the first time Peter had been able to touch anything since Stiles had been resurrected. “Oh my god,” he gasped, lunging forward and throwing his arms around him in a hug. Peter’s arms wrapped around his in return, holding him tight.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, just enjoying the closeness, the touch. Finally, Peter pressed his lips to Stiles’s cheek, just in front of his ear, and murmured, “So you’re not dead.”

“Okay,” Stiles conceded. His head felt foggy, still, but he recognized it as similar to the fever-fog. “So what the hell? Am I dreaming?”

“No,” Peter said, then pulled back, sighing. “Well, _I_ know you’re not, but I suppose that doesn’t help you. That’s exactly what a dream-me would say. Do you know how to tell if you’re dreaming?”

Stiles chewed on his lower lip, brain churning against the tide of fever. “Reading,” he said finally. “People in dreams can’t read.”

Peter stepped away and gestured him toward the Sherlock book on the floor.

Stiles crouched in front of it, and sure enough, he could read through it as easily as ever. “Not dreaming,” he confirmed. “Not dead, not dreaming. I mean, I can’t be… I’ve been working for weeks to be able to even hear you properly. I can’t be...”

Tipping his head to the side, Peter smirked at him. “It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible,” he quoted, and Stiles knew the phrase at once.

“Whatever remains,” he concluded, “however improbable, must be the truth.” Stiles shook his head and looked over at his body in wonder. “I’m astral projecting.”

Peter snorted. “And all it took to get your racing brain to shut up was a hundred and three fever.” He sat on the floor, back against the foot of Stiles’s bed, and beckoned him closer. “Come here. I missed you.”

Stiles scrambled closer, climbing into Peter’s lap and pressing his face against the man’s neck. “I missed you, too,” he murmured.

They made out like that for long, slow minutes, Peter’s hands skimming up under the back of Stiles’s shirt. Finally, he nudged Stiles back, placing a hand on his chest to keep them apart. “We don’t know how long we’ll have like this,” he reminded Stiles. “Now that we know that an altered state of mind – a compromised state, essentially – is the key here, we can recreate it.”

“What, like go get myself sick intentionally?” Stiles joked. “Or should I try getting hammered?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “There are… herbal preparations you could use to alter your mental state.”

Stiles squinted. It had been a while since he had to decipher Peter’s euphemistic language. “Pot tea?” he guessed.

“I was thinking something more in the salvia family, but you’re not far off,” Peter conceded. “Deaton could help you play around with blends, and you could experiment with potency on your own. It’s not like we would need you at _this_ level of out-of-your-head. Just enough to hear me.”

With a shrug, Stiles traced his fingers over the line of Peter’s jaw. “I mean, as long as it’s not dangerous to take too much, I think I’d prefer being able to see you like this.”

Peter caught him by the wrist, a little too harsh, then seemed to settle. He kissed Stile’s fingertips. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

“Why?”

It took Peter a moment to weigh his words out. He settled on, “You’ve been recovering from being like this. From being a ghost. It took you a long time. I wouldn’t want to set you back.”

“I’ve been recovering from being _dead_ ,” Stiles argued. “Remember that whole part where it’s the most traumatic thing?”

“You can’t lie about this, Stiles. Not to me. I won’t let you get hurt over this any more.”

“It’s okay,” Stiles told him softly, then before he could lose his nerve, “I love you.”

The door creaked open, his dad whispering, “Stiles?” and the next thing Stiles knew, he was in darkness, stiflingly hot and stinking of his own trapped breath. His head swam with confusion, and the only thing he could make out clearly from his own thoughts was a feeling of loss, of frustration.

* * *

  
  


Lydia and Danny showed up in his room the day after the fever hit, both of them with arms full of books. “You look like crap,” she observed, and Danny nodded his agreement.

“I feel like crap,” Stiles answered, brow furrowing as he recognized the books. “Deaton let you take those from his office?” The vet had been very insistent on keeping the books well-guarded. If they got into the wrong hands, who knew what might happen.

“We had a conversation, and he agreed they could be loaned out until you’re feeling better,” Lydia explained primly. She set her stack of books on his desk, and Danny followed suit.

“Poor Deaton,” Stiles mumbled.

Danny snorted. “You have no idea.”

“So where are we going to start? The Latin?” Lydia asked.

Stiles had been sitting in his bed with a Sherlock book, _A Case of Identity_ , but he marked the page and set it aside. “Uh, actually, did you bring the one with the magical herbal properties?”

“I think I have that one,” Danny said, scanning his finger down the stack he had brought in, then extracting the leather-bound tome from the center. “This one?” He held it up: _Spiritual Herbs of North America_. Stiles nodded.

“What are you thinking?” Lydia asked.

Stiles’s hesitated, then told them, “I accidentally astral projected yesterday, when the fever was really bad. One second I was in bed, the next I was in the cellar downtown. It felt… it felt a lot like being a ghost again.”

Danny and Lydia shared a look, like they were waiting for the other to respond first so they could follow suit. They weren’t sure, Stiles thought, if they should be happy for his progress or worried that he had gone and re-traumatized himself.

“Anyway, I got to see Peter, and we figured that it was the mind-altered state of the fever, which means we could use some sort of… y’know, potion, to create a similar state of mind.”

Danny sat down in Stiles’s desk chair, an eyebrow arched at him.

“What?”

Lydia sat on the end of Stiles’s bed and patted his leg through the blankets. “So the ghost of a serial killer is asking you to drug yourself so you can talk to him?”

Stiles huffed and flopped back on his bed. “I am too sick to deal with this sort of judgment,” he declared. “If you don’t want to help, I’ll do it by myself.”

At the sound of his desk chair rolling across the floor, Stiles looked up and saw Danny scooting closer, the book open on his lap. “How doped up do we need to get you?”

* * *

  
  


In the end, the potion had been a fairly simple undertaking. Peter’s concern about Stiles fully projecting turned out to be a moot point. Most of the ingredients were at least a little bit poisonous, so the dosages had to be very weak. Rather than a tea, Stiles burned the ingredients and inhaled the smoke.Even so, Deaton had given him a tonic to clear the poisons from his system afterward.

“ _How much of that stuff did you burn?_ ” Peter asked. _“It’s been nearly an hour. It didn’t last this long last time_.”

Stiles shrugged a shoulder, squinting at the chess board with his tongue poking out from between his lips. “I don’t know if it’s even the herbs anymore,” he admitted. “I think I’m just getting used to how my brain feels when we’re talking. Like, they just get me into it, but I don’t need them to stay there.” He slid his rook forward two spaces.

“ _Hmph, you’re still playing like you’re drugged up,”_ Peter commented. _“Knight to G4._ ”

With a smirk, Stiles moved the piece for him, moving the sacrificed pawn to the side of the board. Then he slid his bishop into the vacancy the knight had left. “Who’s drugged up now?” It would take a few moves to really get into place, but Peter had significantly weakened his own defenses.

“ _You’re a terror, you know that?”_

They hadn’t talked about Stiles’s panicked declaration of love, but he didn’t think they had to. Stiles liked to think he could hear the sentiment returned in Peter’s tone, when he said things like that.

* * *

  
  


Someone was killing virgins. Someone had killed _Heather_. Once Stiles had started to put the pieces together, adrenaline had taken over the grief of seeing his friend dead in the morgue. He talked to Caitlin, the girl whose girlfriend had disappeared, then immediately called Scott.

No answer.

He called Isaac, Erica, Boyd. Nothing. Derek didn’t have a goddamn phone, so that ruled him out. Lydia was still shaken up from finding a dead body earlier that night, and while she could maybe have gone out and followed the stink of death, Stiles didn’t want to put her through that.

He tried Scott again. Nothing.

“Son, are you sure about this?” his dad asked as he hung up. “Virgin sacrifices? Really?” He spoke under his breath, though there was no one else around to hear in the secluded hallway Stiles had ducked into.

“Dad, it’s like you always say: one is an incident, two is a coincidence...”

His dad sighed. “Three is a pattern. Alright, so what’s the next step in this situation? Who would want to do something like this?”

Stiles huffed in frustration, dragging a hand over his hair. “I don’t know. I need to talk to Peter. I need to find out if this could be the alpha pack.” He tapped Danny’s name on his contacts list and lifted the phone to his ear.

“Stiles? Where are you?” Danny asked, urgent.

“I’m at the hospital – where is everyone else?”

“They’re tracking a rabid werewolf through town. It’s Derek’s sister.”

“Laura? No way, she’s -”

“His other sister, I guess. His little sister. He thought she was dead, but the alpha pack had her.”

“And she’s rabid?” Stiles glanced up at his dad, who looked increasingly concerned. “Shit. Okay, what can we do?”

“Stay inside,” Danny said, and before Stiles could cuss him out for the suggestion, he said, “They have Allison and Chris out there helping them hunt her. They want to capture her, but the chances of having to kill her are higher if there are vulnerable humans in the mix.”

Vulnerable humans like his dad.

Stiles thanked Danny and hung up. He explained what Danny had shared. He chewed on his lip. “I need to get home. I need to talk to Peter.”

“I can give you a ride,” his dad agreed.

“Then you should go to the station and work on writing this stuff up,” Stiles told him.

“Stiles, there’s a rabid werewolf out there -”

“No, dad,” Stiles snapped, harsher than he’d meant to. He blew out a breath. “I just lost my friend, and now most of my friends are out there in danger. Don’t make me worry about you, too.”

His dad hesitated, then reached for Stiles and squeezed the back of his neck. “Okay. Let’s go.”

* * *

  
  


By the time they got back, the adrenaline rush had completely abandoned him. Stiles’s dad offered to stay at home with him, but he had taken too much time off work this year as it was. Once his car was back out of the driveway, Stiles let himself have a little meltdown, sinking onto the bottom step and crying into his knees.

He hadn’t spent much time with Heather over the past few years. Distance meant they didn’t usually have time to see one another during the school year, but they always hung out during summer break. Even if he hadn’t talked to her as often as he would have liked, her existence had always been a sort of _presence_ in his life. And now she was gone.

Sniffing, Stiles lifted his head and wiped at his face. “Fuck it,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “Fuck it, I need to see you. I don’t even care.” He went into the kitchen and filled the kettle, set it on the stove to boil. Then he charged up the stairs to get his box of the herb blend.

He was still crying while he doled a scoop of it into a tea strainer. He could feel the uncomfortable shiver of Peter’s touch to his shoulder, but shook it off. “Can’t change my mind if I can’t hear you. You can yell at me once I’m done here.”

He stared down at the ground-up leaves while the churn of water in the kettle grew noisier. The mimosa and salvia weren’t poisonous – the salvia was mildly hallucinogenic, but not in the quantities in the mix – but the other herbs were, to some extent. Mandrake root, henbane, foxglove.

Stiles set the strainer in a mug and poured the water over it, his hand shaking so badly he spilled over the sides a few times.

He glanced at the clock. “I don’t know how long to wait,” he realized. “I guess… I guess, the longer I wait, the more potent it’ll be.” Stiles chewed on his lip and shifted from foot to foot, glancing between the clock and the mug. A minute ticked by. He wiped his eyes, fairly sure the waterworks had passed.

Another minute.

“Okay, one more,” he decided, rocking restlessly between his heels and the balls of his feet.

At three minutes, he removed the strainer and set it aside, holding the mug between his hands. It was too hot to drink, so he tucked the box of herbs under his arm and made his way upstairs to his room, careful not to spill on the way.

He sat on the edge of his bed while he drank it down, as fast as the temperature would allow. By the time he reached the bottom of the mug, his head felt heavy, all of his senses going soft and muddled. Stiles lay down and let himself breathe slowly.

“ _\- an idiot sometimes, but I didn’t think you would -”_

“I can hear you,” Stiles slurred.

“ _Good. Get up and go make yourself throw up before that shit finishes absorbing.”_

“I’m fine, I feel fine,” Stiles insisted. He started to feel apart from himself, drifting. The next moment, he stood in his bedroom, face to face with Peter.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Peter demanded.

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Stiles snarked, stepping in close. He made to wrap his arms around Peter, but the man shoved him back.

“A week ago, you were in here in a panic because you didn’t want to die again,” he snarled. “Now apparently you’re suicidal.”

Stiles huffed and rolled his eyes. “I’m not – I just needed to see you.”

“You just drank _poison_ , Stiles. You’re not stupid. You know what you just risked.”

He hadn’t really been thinking, but Stiles had known. Part of him still held onto that thought he’d had in the Argent’s basement: that if he died, it would only mean he got to be with Peter again. But Stiles knew he was being selfish. He looked back at his body, eyes closed and chest rising and falling slowly. “I’m still breathing,” he murmured in his own defense.

Peter sighed and reached for him, yanking Stiles in against his chest and hugging him tightly. “If I had a stomach, you would be giving me ulcers,” he griped.

“Can werewolves even get ulcers?” Stiles asked, and Peter only cuffed him on the back of the head for the question.

They were quiet a moment, just enjoying the closeness. Finally, Peter said, “I’m sorry about your friend. I’m sorry you had to see her like that.”

“Do you know what did it? Or who?”

“Not yet, but I can find out,” Peter told him. “Virgin sacrifices – well, it has to be a magic user. Those would be used for a spell. A powerful one.” He stroked a hand over Stiles’s back, tucked his face against Stiles’s neck. “You’re in danger.”

“You mean aside from my own reckless behavior?” Stiles joked, though he knew what Peter meant. “I guess half a handjob doesn’t really count toward devirginizing in the eyes of a psycho killer warlock.”

Peter lifted his head and wrinkled his nose at Stiles. “I don’t think it counts in the eyes of _anyone_.”

Stiles glanced back at his body. “Then maybe… maybe we should fix that. You know, get me out of danger,” he suggested. He didn’t know how long he had on this plane. Peter looked hesitant, so Stiles rushed to reassure him. “I know you said before – you said that I deserved more than desperation, but this is more than that. Peter, these have been the longest months of my _life_ , and I couldn’t have gotten through any of it without you.” His mouth was getting away with him, and Stiles felt helpless to rein it in. “I know you don’t want to talk about what I said before, but I meant it. I do, I love you. I don’t even need you to say it back, because I get you’re not that kind of guy. But I care about you, and if anyone is going to save me from getting virgin sacrificed, I want it to be you.”

Peter raised an eyebrow at him, staring. “Are you finished?” he asked, lips curling in a smirk. Once he received a nod of confirmation, he leaned in and kissed Stiles, slow and thorough. The kind of kiss that took the whole of Stiles’s concentration and made everything else fade into the background. He only stopped to tug Stiles’s shirt up and off. “The bed is taken,” Peter observed.

“The floor is fine,” Stiles insisted. “It’s not like I can feel it anyway.”

“And here I was planning to romance you somewhere nice.”

“My room is nice,” Stiles protested.

Peter kissed his neck. “It’s a good thing I’m dead, because I’m sure it smells in here,” he teased.

Stiles scoffed and yanked Peter’s shirt from his pants, tugging it up until Peter backed off and helped him to remove it. “Yeah, smells like me. Like awesomeness,” he insisted.

“Like the clothes in your gym bag and the dried cum in the tissues in the wastebasket,” Peter pressed.

“You know, this isn’t the kind of dirty talk I had in mind,” Stiles complained, but there was no heat behind it. He was distracted, running his hands over Peter’s chest, down to his abs. He whined. “Is it a werewolf superpower to be super hot?”

Peter grinned. “Lie down.”

Stiles did and was immediately rewarded with Peter’s weight on top of him, skin to skin and hips pressed together. He was surprised to find he was already mostly hard, maybe a side effect of having a body nearby that was probably also in the same condition. “You think I’m gonna come in my pants in the real world when we fuck?” he asked.

“Probably. Do you mind?”

Stiles shook his head. “Nope.” He popped the ‘P.’

Peter took his time, kissing down Stiles’s body, licking at his nipples until they felt sore and Stiles’s hips were rocking restlessly, desperate for more attention. Then Peter rid him of his pants and underwear in one go. “You’re beautiful,” Peter told him. If they had been in the physical world, Stiles would be blushing from his cheeks to his chest.

“You’ve been watching me jerk off, right?” Stiles asked. It had taken a couple of weeks after resurrection for him to even be able to fathom masturbation. The first night he’d done it, he’d simply whispered, “It’s okay if you want to stay.” They hadn’t talked about it since.

Fingers wrapping around Stiles’s cock, Peter nodded and lowered his head, licking at the tip.

“Oh, holy fuck, Peter,” Stiles gasped. Then when the man wrapped his lips around him, he had to squeeze his eyes shut and think about something unpleasant. Death. That worked.

“It’s been torture,” Peter murmured, pulling back and licking the length of him, “watching you writhing on your own fingers, wanting them to be mine.” Two fingers pressed against his entrance, rubbing. “You remember what we talked about, before?” he asked. “All you need to do is expect yourself to be open for me, and you will.”

Stiles nodded and imagined the last time he had fingered himself when he masturbated. He imagined that it had been just a few minutes ago, that he’d fucked himself open on his fingers and now his hole was relaxed and slick with lube, ready for Peter. The fingers slid in without a hint of pain.

“God, you’re clever,” Peter praised. He moved his fingers slowly, pressing them deeper, then dragging them out. And, just like he’d said, Stiles knew when they grazed over the spot where his prostate would be, and the same zing of pleasure darted up his spine.

“Oh fuck, Peter,” he sighed, rocking his hips down. “Right there. God. More, I can take more. Dunno how much time we have, and I want you to -”

Peter pressed a third finger into him, sucking at the base of his dick while he did so. “I will. Be patient, sweetheart. I’ll give you what you need.”

Stiles finally risked opening his eyes, and he saw that Peter had lost his pants and underwear, probably had willed them away. He had a hand wrapped around his own cock, stroking slowly while he mouthed at Stiles’s. “Can I… can I touch you first?” Stiles asked.

Peter looked up and met his eyes, smiling softly. “Of course.” He moved up over Stiles and kissed him as he pulled one of Stiles’s hands to his dick.

It felt warm, in that eerie not-temperature way that only Peter felt on this plane. Stiles stroked slowly, exploring the shape of it with his fingers, enjoying the way Peter’s breath hitched when he pressed his thumb just under the base of the head. “Fuck me now?” he breathed.

Nodding, Peter kissed him again, then pulled back as he adjusted their position, pulling Stiles’s legs up. The first press burned a little, but maybe only because Stiles had always imagined that it would. He had also imagined that it would fade quickly into pleasure, and it did that, too. Peter kept eye contact and went slowly but didn’t pause, waiting until he was fully seated inside of Stiles before letting his eyes fall shut.

“Christ, you feel good.”

Stiles could only imagine how it felt, not only the sex but the intimacy, the closeness after weeks of not being able to touch anything or anyone, with the single exception of his accidental fever projection. “You can move,” Stiles said. “I want you to move.”

He had imagined Peter being an animalistic sort of lover, forceful and possessive. It was the way he kissed, usually. Like he wanted nothing more than to own Stiles entirely. Instead, he wrapped a hand around the back of Stiles’s head, cradling it against the floor, though neither of them could feel the hardness of the surface. The other hand held him by the thigh, keeping him open as Peter rocked into him with steady, firm thrusts.

It seemed to last a long time, though it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. Stiles clutched at Peter’s shoulders, kissed everywhere he could reach. He got noisy, whining and whimpering and moaning in turn as Peter punched each sound out of him with the snap of his hips.

“Oh fuck, I’m gonna come. Peter, I’m -”

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut, eyes rolling back as the pleasure rushed over him.

Then, abruptly, he was lying in his bed. Clothed. Empty. Coming down off an orgasm that had soaked through his underwear and jeans. Stiles looked down at himself. “Fuck! Seriously?”

“ _Think about how I feel,_ ” Peter muttered wryly.

Stiles hesitated, head still a little foggy from the tea – and probably from coming, too. Then he tugged his shirt off and kicked his soiled pants and underwear down. “Come on me,” he said. “I know I won’t be able to feel it, but you should still… you can pretend it’ll get on me. Pretend it’ll make me smell like you.”

“ _You’re a terror,_ ” Peter groaned. _“When I’m alive again, I’m going to wreck you. You’ll reek of me. Every werewolf for miles around will be able to smell me on you.”_ Stiles couldn’t hear grunts or anything like that, but he could tell from the increasingly distracted tone of voice that Peter was doing as he’d said, jerking off over him. He went quiet for a moment, then he sighed. _“That was perfect, Stiles. Now go take the tonic Deaton gave you.”_

Right. Because Stiles drank poison.

He should probably give that some extra thought at some point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always a ray of sunshine in my life!


	11. The Logical Faculty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles recruits some friends to help him capture the alphas, but even best-laid plans tend to go awry.

Lydia bit her lip, perfectly manicured eyebrows drawing together. “Explain to me what I’m looking at here,” she said, crossing her ankles where they sat at the end of Stiles’s bed, her bare legs stretched in front of her, only the tops of her thighs covered by a light, floral skirt.

Stiles opened his mouth, but she held up a finger to indicate she wasn’t finished speaking.

“Because it _looks like_ you’ve finally snapped. And, don’t get me wrong, sweetie, we’ve all seen this coming since you returned to the land of the living, but I honestly didn’t think there would quite this much…” She squinted her eyes as she thought, lips pursed. “... _crafting_ involved.”

Stiles looked back at his cork board, which he had liberated from a storage unit at the sheriff’s station and which his dad was pretending hadn’t been in his room for the past week. He had clippings and pictures, scraps of notes, all connected by colorful thumbtacks and bits of yarn.

“It’s not – ugh,” he huffed, turning and putting his hands on his hips. Stiles looked to Danny for some modicum of reason, but Danny just sat in his desk chair with a constipated sort of look on his face as he stared at the board. “Police use this format all the time to organize a case.”

“The case of how to bring Peter back from the dead,” Allison surmised from her spot on his rug, legs crossed and feet tucked under her. She twisted a lock of hair around her finger, which had fallen loose from the bun on top of her head.

“Are you going to let me explain or not?” Stiles snapped, looking between the three of them, waiting for one of them to interrupt him again. When no one did, he stabbed a finger toward the center of the board. “Here, these are the details of the spell, the resources we’ll need to make it work.”

He had month calendars for May and June at the top, the days of the full moon circled in red marker. Below that, some handwritten notes, pictures of herbs, an index card that read “banshee/generous angel who will definitely do the spell again,” and a second index card that read “3 ALPHAS MINIMUM.”

Stiles moved to the left side of the board. “These are our resources. Down at the bottom, the punchy, muscle-y resources.” Pictures of Scott, Derek, and Derek’s betas. A yellow string connected Derek to the “ALPHAS” card.

“Here in the middle, our more tactical-type resources.” His dad, Allison, and a card that read “Allison’s dad (maybe).”

“Then up top, these are the brainy and mystical resources.” He had pictures of himself, Danny, Deaton, and Lydia, a green string connecting her to the “banshee” card. There were also purple strings connecting her and Danny to the opposite side of the board, to pictures of the twins.

“I’m a mystical resource?” Danny asked.

Stiles shrugged. “Honestly, you’re more of a honeypot-type resource, but I didn’t want to make a whole category for that.”

“Excuse you?”

Barreling on loudly, Stiles turned back to the board. “So on the right side, obviously -”

“The alpha pack,” Allison supplied.

“Right! In order from most to least evil.” He didn’t have pictures of any other than the twins, so instead he had a page of notes on each:

“DEUCALION – alpha of alphas, most evil, blind unless shifted, melodramatic”

“KALI – hates shoes, creepy claw feet, very violent, is apparently boning Ennis”

“ENNIS – just absolutely huge, boning Kali”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Danny said. He pointed at the bottom left corner, where Aiden and Ethan’s pictures were side-by-side. “Ethan is less evil than Aiden.”

Stiles raised an eyebrow at him, then turned to Lydia, expecting her to point out that Danny was just saying that because he was gaga over Ethan. She shrugged a shoulder. “He’s more sensitive,” she agreed.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Stiles enunciated slowly as he rearranged the twins’ pictures to Danny’s liking. “You guys aren’t really getting with the big picture here. This is a strategy meeting.”

“Oh,” said Allison softly, looking a little hurt. She picked at a bit of fluff on the floor.

“What?”

Lydia threw a book at him from his bedside table. Stiles ducked and it hit him on the shoulder.

“Ow! What!”

Allison looked a little flushed, glancing back at Lydia, then at Stiles again. “I just – I mean, it’s just kind of the first time we’ve hung out since… you know. Since everything happened.

Stiles gaped at her.

Danny pitched in, “We thought this was, like, non-werewolf bonding time.”

Oh, god, he was the biggest asshole in the universe.

“You know,” Lydia added. “Squishy, vulnerable humans and almost-humans support group?”

Was douchebaggery contagious? Like an STD? And a metaphysical STD at that. They should have used a metaphysical condom. “Um,” Stiles floundered, shifting from foot to foot.

Allison was trying not to look hurt and embarrassed. Danny was giving him bitchface, but looking like he had expected nothing less. Lydia looked low-key furious at him.

“I mean, we can – we can totally do that. That’s a really good idea. You know, like… like non-wolves club. That’d be…” He glanced back at his board. “I mean, it’s just right now that I… you know, I really need to get Peter back, and I was hoping you would help me...”

The room fell into silence as he looked between the three of them, trying for a sheepish and pleading expression. Lydia was the first to crack, huffing a sigh. “Only if you tell us the truth,” she said, arching an eyebrow.

Allison looked confused, but Danny’s expression shifted to smug.

“The truth?”

Lydia stared him down, the eyebrow creeping higher.

Oh god. “Did Jackson tell you?” he said in what was meant to be a normal human voice but was more like the squeak of a tiny baby kitten.

The other eyebrow lifted. She was a demon. She was a demonic harbinger of death here to make his life misery until he would pray for the endless abyss of death. She tilted her head to the side expectantly.

“Fine!” he exploded, arms flinging wide. “Fine, Peter and I are… well… I mean, I don’t really know what we are exactly, but we’re something and we’re, you know, _together_ , and we’re -”

Allison’s jaw dropped open in shock. Lydia rolled her eyes.

“You’re fucking,” Danny said flippantly, then frowned. “How do ghosts fuck anyway?”

“Mind your business is how they fuck,” Stiles muttered.

Lydia got off the bed and smoothed her skirt before striding over to the cork board. “So, as you all now know, this...” She gestured to the board. “...is not simply a case of Stiles’s ADHD hyperfocus, obsessive personality, and flair for the dramatic. It’s also a mission of _love_.” She batted her eyes exaggeratedly as she purred the last word.

“You’re in love,” Allison said slowly, “with a serial killer?”

Stiles’s face flamed in a flush as he sputtered, “He’s – it’s not – we – _oh my god_.” Stiles growled. “Are you all going to help me or do you just want to stand around and make fun of me?”

Danny rose to his feet and clapped a hand on Stiles’s shoulder. “Of course we are. But for the record, even for you this is super weird.”

Allison got up last and turned her attention to the board. “So what do you need us to do?”

* * *

  
  


Ethan and Aiden, while the least evil, were also the easiest targets thanks to Danny and Lydia. They had agreed to lure their respective hunks of alpha boy-toy to the old Hale house, with assurances that neither of them would be seriously hurt. Stiles had done his research, and he’d checked his findings at least a dozen times. There was a good chance that they would lose their alpha status, but as long as three alphas were present for the spell, it would be non-lethal.

That left a third alpha for him and Allison to wrangle before the first night of the May full moon. Ennis was huge, but he was slower than Kali and would be more susceptible to the distance attacks that they would use.

Then, at the old mall, everything had gone completely to shit.

“God, that stuff smells horrible,” Erica whined, squirming farther away from him on the back seat.

“Stiles, can you at least crack a window or something?” Lydia asked, staring at her phone.

He rolled his eyes. “Not if I want to actually inhale any of it.” He sprinkled another pinch of herb mix on top of the already smoldering pile in the Altoids tin in his lap.

“Okay, well, try not to drug the driver, alright?” Allison bargained, her hands tightening on the wheel.

Stiles’s vision went a little blurry as the effects set in. He closed the lid of the tin and slumped back in the seat, going a little boneless. The first rush of the herbs hit the hardest.

Erica started in again. “Jesus, is this what you’ve been -”

“- _go, just let me know_ -”

“- getting high off -”

“Shut up,” Stiles whined, rubbing at his face. “Can’t hear when you’re both talking at once.”

“Both?” Erica said, then her eyes went wide. “ _Oh._ Sorry.”

“ _Derek is alive,”_ Peter told him immediately.

“Oh, thank God,” Stiles sighed. “Erica, Derek’s alive. Text them.” He waved a hand toward the bus up ahead of them where the cross-country team, including half of Derek’s pack, the least evil members of the alpha pack, and an apparently still-bleeding Scott were all trapped under Coach’s incessant whistle.

“ _He made it back to his apartment. He’s in rough shape, but he’s healing._ ”

“Ennis?”

“ _They brought him to Deaton’s. It’s looking like he’ll make it.”_

* * *

  
  


Ennis did not make it. They learned that after a frankly nightmarish stay at a Bates Motel wannabe, having narrowly escaped an attack of wolfsbane. Presumably, left for them by the Darach.

“It’s got to be Kali then, right?” Allison asked. She sat cross-legged on Stiles’s bed while he glared at his cork board, a giant ‘X’ across Ennis’s scrap of paper.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You don’t think Deucalion would be easier to go after?”

She frowned and shook her head. “No, he may be blind, but he’s their leader for a reason. Besides, Kali’s grieving. She’ll be reckless.” Her expression darkened.

Stiles turned to face her, realizing that, out of anyone, Allison would know exactly where Kali’s head was at right now, even if she didn’t know. Peter had told Stiles about what Deucalion had done to Ennis, but Stiles had held that piece of information back. It was valuable, as Peter would advise, the sort of thing a good strategist kept in his back pocket.

At this point, he especially didn’t want that little tidbit to reach Kali. If she knew, she would go after Deucalion, and one of them would die. He couldn’t afford to whittle down his options on alphas so close before the spell. Besides, it would be likely that the pack would move on after that sort of upset.

Allison lifted her chin as she met his eye. “She’ll go after Derek if she can, but she won’t just want to kill him. She hurt him by hurting someone he cares about first.”

“So we can lure her where we want her.”

Allison nodded. “And make sure we don’t leave any easy targets for her. We’ll hope she comes on her own, but Lydia and Danny should be able to tell us if the twins get called in.”

“We’ll get the whole pack together.” Stiles pulled out his phone and dialed Boyd, the first beta on his contacts list.

“What?” Boyd said.

“Where are you? Are you with Derek?”

“Fine, thank you, and how are you today, Stiles?”

“Boyd!”

“We’re all at the loft.”

“Good. Good, stay there. Allison and I have a plan for Kali.”

There was a soft chuckle on the other end of the line. “Funny you should say that, because so do I.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles had to concede that Boyd’s plan with the electricity was brilliant. His and Allison’s plan about keeping the whole pack together wasn’t going nearly as well.

“Someone needs to stay with him,” Scott said. “My mom got him breathing again, but she says Danny won’t be able to leave the hospital for a few days.”

“And you’re sure it was mistletoe?”

“That’s what Ethan said.”

Stiles paced, tugging at his hair. Boyd and Derek were getting the wiring set up, though Peter had assured him that Kali wasn’t planning to strike right away. They would wait on the water until he gave them the signal.

“Any news on the doctors?” Stiles asked.

“No. I’m pretty sure this is more sacrifices, which means I really need to stay with my mom tonight.”

Stiles swore and closed his eyes, mentally maneuvering his chess pieces. They were being attacked from all sides with too many vulnerable angles. “Allison,” he called. She and Lydia had set themselves to the books, trying to figure out more about the sacrifices. She lifted her head. “We need you to watch over Danny.”

Her eyes shifted to her bow and arrow, leaning against the wall. “But I thought...”

“I know,” he sighed, “but we can’t risk sending one of Derek’s betas on their own. Scott has to watch his mom, and you’re the only non-werewolf that can fight if it comes to it.”

Allison’s lips pressed together, and she looked… _dutiful_. He couldn’t think of another way to describe it. Like a soldier who had been given an important mission. Stiles remembered belatedly that, the last time Danny had been in the hospital, she had put him there. “I’ll keep him safe,” she said.

* * *

  
  


Kali left her mark the next day, and that afternoon, Deaton was taken by the Darach. Nothing remained of his and Allison’s plan, resources scattered to the wind. Scott searched for his boss. Allison dug for clues with the aid of Danny and his research on teluric currents. Stiles desperately tried to shake some banshee wisdom loose from Lydia while regularly dosing himself with meditation herbs from an Altoids tin.

Which left Derek and his betas alone to face down Kali at the loft.

The group of them – Scott, Lydia, Allison, and Stiles – had all converged at the veterinary clinic as they looked over the maps of the town.

“Stiles.” Scott placed a hand on his arm. When Stiles looked up, Scott gestured to a table of medical implements. “A prescription bottle just fell over.”

“Fuck.” Stiles scrambled for his backpack, digging the Altoids tin and lighter from the front pocket. “Okay, okay, I’ve got it, give me a second,” he mumbled. He blindly shoved his hand into the bag where he’d been keeping the herbs, fishing around for a pinch. He found nothing. “Oh, hell no, not again,” he muttered, pulling the bag out and inspecting it. Barely crumbs left.

“We don’t have time for this,” Allison told him. “ _Deaton_ doesn’t have time for this.”

Stiles’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

_From Cora: cut power_

That meant Derek and the betas didn’t have time either.

“Scott,” he said, getting to his feet. “I need you to punch me in the head.”

“ _What_?”

“Just enough to daze me, don’t knock me out, alright? Just do it.” He stalked toward where Scott stood at the table.

“Stiles, I’m not going to -”

“ _PUNCH ME!”_

The blow knocked him on his ass. Stiles’s ears rang, but under the din, he heard,

“ _Deaton is in the vault where they found Cora._ ”

“Bank vault,” Stiles slurred, fairly certain he’d gone cross-eyed. “Deaton. Bank vault.”

“You’re sure?”

Stiles massaged at the side of his head. “I’m sure.”

“ _Get to Derek’s now_.”

“You three go help the others,” Scott said. “I’ve got this.” With that, he was out the door.

Stiles groaned as he got to his feet. “Good thing I’m not driving.”

* * *

  
  


By the time they got there, the fight had clearly gone south. Stiles, Allison, and Lydia all stumbled to a stop in the doorway, staring on in horror as Kali and Derek lashed at one another, the twins taking on the other members of the pack.

Stiles’s English teacher, of all people, stood huddled in the corner, sobbing.

Erica yelped in pain as alpha claws caught her across the back. Boyd charged Ethan as she went down and was caught around the throat and thrown across the room. His body made a sick crunching sound as it hit the desk at a bad angle.

This had all gotten so far out of control. So far off his plan. Maybe it was the punch to the head, but, suddenly, Stiles couldn’t think strategy. These weren’t pieces on a chess board. These were his _friends_. His pack. And they were going to be torn to shreds.

“Stop!” he called. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that no one did. Isaac hesitated a little, and it got him laid out with a brutal punch. He tried again. “You don’t know how Ennis died!”

That got her attention. Kali took a stumbling step away from Derek, watching him to make sure he wasn’t coming at her before she looked to Stiles. “We all saw how he died.”

The twins stepped back as well, the fight ceasing.

“No, he died later,” Stiles reminded her, “at Deaton’s. And you didn’t get to see the body after, did you?” He took a step forward into the water. It immediately rushed through the canvas of his shoes, soaking into his socks.

“He died from the fall,” Kali snapped. “I didn’t need to see it.”

“No, Deucalion didn’t want you to see the body,” he continued, “because then you would see how he crushed Ennis’s skull in his hand. He was awake when it happened. He was going to be fine.”

“You’re lying,” she spat.

Stiles stood as tall as he could, trying on that cool confidence that looked so effortless on Peter’s face. “Listen to my heartbeat. Deucalion killed Ennis.”

Kali looked like she believed him, but she didn’t want to. “How could you possibly know that?” she hissed.

He hesitated, not wanting to give Peter up to their enemy. He went for a technical truth. “Deaton saw the whole thing,” he told her.

She stared at him a moment longer, willing it not to be true. Then she let out a brutal, bone-shaking howl, head tipped toward the ceiling and arms thrown back.

* * *

  
  


That night, Stiles got ready for bed in a sort of haze. His dad was going to be out late, writing up the paperwork for Deaton’s kidnapping. In the end, he had been the one to save Deaton.

Stiles had received that news in the same sort of vacant state, dully giving Scott the summary of what had gone down at Derek’s loft. His hands kept shaking. His head hurt. He kept hearing that noise Erica had made when the claws caught her in the back. He imagined them going deeper, too deep. He imagined them severing her spine, killing her. In his mind, he saw the way Cora and Derek had clung to one another after the alphas left, both of them having feared the worst.

He hadn’t wanted to tell Kali the truth because it wasn’t good strategy. He put everyone in danger for his stupid fucking strategy, and it hadn’t even worked. Not even close.

Stiles got as far as climbing into bed before he made up his mind to make the tea. Peter didn’t try to touch him through the planes this time, didn’t try to stop him.

When he surfaced on the astral plane, Peter pulled him in close and held him without saying a word.

“I’m acting like you,” he whispered against Peter’s shoulder. He wrapped his arms around Peter’s middle. “I love you, Peter, but I don’t want to be like you. I can’t be like you.”

“You’re not,” Peter murmured. He kissed the side of Stiles’s head. “You could never be.” He pulled back just enough to tap his fingers against Stiles’s chest. “You have too much heart, remember?”

Stiles let out a shaky breath and hugged Peter again, letting himself finally, finally calm down.

“I hate to talk business when you’re like this,” Peter murmured, “but I think I know where the Darach will be tonight. Do you want to come with?”

He did.

The final healer was left in an old warehouse, not far from the distillery. The Darach, hideous beneath its cloak, was still arranging the body when they arrived.

It turned toward them, and for a moment, Stiles felt terrified that it would be able to see them on this plane. It simply strode past them, though.

“Those injuries,” Peter murmured.

“The threefold death?”

“No,” Peter said, “the injuries on the Darach. They… god, it’s… I _know_ something, but I can’t remember what I know.” He made a frustrated noise as they followed the cloaked creature.

Then it morphed before their eyes, the cloak melting away and leaving his English teacher. Mrs. Blake.

“Okay, what the fuck,” Stiles snapped.

“Oh, this is good,” Peter said with a grin.

“How is this good?” Stiles demanded.

Peter smirked. "I remember where I know those wounds from, Stiles. I think we just found a very useful ally.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to come visit me [on tumblr](https://luulapants.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Comments bring me so much happiness!!


	12. The Schemer Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a new and unlikely ally on their side, Stiles and Peter's plan finally comes together.

Bringing the Darach to their side shifted the entire board. Stiles could see that from the start. Getting their side to accept such an arrangement was a whole battle unto itself, though.

“Are you fucking joking?” Stiles had screamed at Peter. He felt his awareness start to bleed around the edges and knew he was getting too worked up to stay projected much longer. “She killed Heather! There’s no fucking way I’ll ally with someone like that!”

But just two days later, he found himself on the opposite side of the same argument.

“Look, I don’t like it,” he insisted, “but we are in desperate times. In desperate situations, you have to be prepared to choose the lesser evil.” It was, word-for-word, the argument Peter had made to him. “People are dying. We can’t be choosy about our allies and we definitely don’t have the luxury to sit around arguing ethics.”

Lydia narrowed her eyes at him, frowning like she was trying to figure out a puzzle.

Danny started to pack up his trumpet without interrupting his irritated glare at Stiles. That was probably fair. Stiles had dragged Lydia into Danny’s practice room, interrupting him without so much as an apology and immediately launching into his new plan.

“What?” Stiles demanded. “You would rather sit around and wait while people die? If we help the Darach take down Deucalion, she doesn’t need to use the sacrifices to beat him. Plus, it takes care of our alpha pack problem, _plus_ it takes care of our Peter-being-dead problem.”

Lydia lifted an eyebrow at him.

“Fine, _my_ Peter-being-dead problem.”

Danny turned to Lydia as he snapped his trumpet case shut. “Am I the only one seeing a pattern here? Stiles teaming up with a psycho killer to raise the dead?”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t fuck this one,” Lydia agreed, folding her arms over her chest.

“ _Guys_ ,” Stiles huffed. “Come on. I know this is different. The Darach almost killed you, Danny.”

“Peter almost killed me,” Lydia snapped.

Stiles leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I know,” he sighed. “I _know_. I’m sorry.”

He heard the click of heels approaching. When he opened his eyes, Lydia was standing directly in front of him, still staring at him like she needed desperately to understand something. “Stiles,” she said, “why the hell are _you_ sorry for what he did?”

Biting his lip, he searched her face, like if he could figure out the question in her expression, he would know the answers to his own questions. “Can you just talk to Aiden?” he asked, then looked over her shoulder at Danny. “And Ethan? Please?”

* * *

  
  


“ _Deucalion killed Kali_ ,” were the first words Stiles heard as he dropped into the trance. He sat on the middle of his bed, head hanging over the ceramic incense dish as the herbs smoldered in the center.

“Holy shit,” he murmured.

Peter laughed in his head, then quoted, _"Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another."_

It was from The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Stiles’s favorite of the Sherlock stories they had read. “Did you see it happen?”

“ _The whole thing. Quite the battle, I have to say. It looked like she might win for a minute, but Deucalion is a force to be reckoned with.”_

“Do the twins know yet?”

“ _Mm,”_ Peter agreed. “ _If they weren’t willing to help before, they will be now. This is a good thing.”_

Someone dying was a good thing for them. Stiles’s stomach clenched, but he knew, logically, that Peter was right. This played well into their hand. “Yeah, I know it is.”

A knock to his side startled him. Stiles looked up and saw his dad standing in the door of his room, knuckles pressed to the doorframe. He was in his uniform, and Stiles was pretty sure he still had four hours left on his shift.

“I’m talking to Peter,” Stiles explained, gesturing to the incense dish.

“I can see that,” his dad agreed. He shifted back, like he might turn around and head downstairs, then seemed to change his mind. “Look, I’m on my lunch break, so I can’t hang around too long. Peter, could Stiles and I have a few minutes to talk? Alone?”

People were always asking Stiles if Peter was around, if he was listening in on what they were saying. His answer was usually, ‘ _Probably._ ’

“ _I’ll go see what the twins are up to_ ,” Peter said.

Stiles nodded. “Alright, yeah, I’ll talk to you later.”

“ _Don’t forget your tonic,_ ” Peter added.

“Yeah, yeah.” Stiles huffed a sigh and put the incense dish on the nightstand before turning to his dad. “He’s gone – what’s up?”

His dad came in and sat on his desk chair, spinning it to face the foot of the bed. “It’s been a while since we talked about… how you’re doing,” he said carefully.

“I’m fine,” Stiles said. “You mean since coming back? Yeah, it’s – I’m fine now.”

He received a skeptical look.

Rolling his eyes, Stiles held up his fingers to tick off the issues he’d faced since getting back. “I’m sleeping. I’m eating. I okay with crowds. It took a little while to readjust, but I’m good now. Seriously. Plus, I was mostly stressed about getting Peter back, and we’re really, really close, so -”

“That’s sort of the concern,” his dad cut in.

“What, that Peter’s coming back?”

“No, not – that’s good. I’m glad that it’s going well. I’m talking about the fact that, for this whole _adjustment period_ , you’ve mostly been focused on this one thing. I don’t think you’re really dealing with the rest of it at all.”

Maybe it was the herbs, but it took Stiles a moment too long to come up with a defense. “Come on, Dad,” he protested. “It makes sense to worry about that more. Like… a life-or-death situation compared to me not liking sweet foods anymore? Obviously that’s a bigger deal.”

“Stiles, you _died_ ,” his dad pressed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “You went through a trauma, and you’re dealing with everything except that.” When Stiles opened his mouth to protest, his dad continued, “You’re not taking your medication.”

Stiles gestured toward his incense dish. “It messes with the trance. Besides, I feel like I haven’t needed it as much since I got back.”

“You’ve been wearing the same six shirts and the same pair of jeans since you got back.”

Stiles glanced down at his clothes. The jeans didn’t cling so tightly that he could feel them pressing against his waist, but they weren’t so baggy that he could feel them rubbing against his legs constantly. The shirt was a long-sleeve t-shirt, soft and well-worn without a tag. He didn’t know what to say.

His dad sighed and sat up straight again. “Look, son, in a normal situation, a responsible parent would have dragged you to therapy right off the bat. I know we don’t exactly have that option here, but you do need help. And I…” He glanced off to the side, lips twisting in frustration. “I don’t know how to help you.” It wasn’t the first time he’d said so, but the anxiety in the words seemed greater now than it had been at first.

“This is helping,” Stiles insisted. “Working on Peter’s situation, I mean. Keeping busy, feeling like I’m doing something. Being able to talk to him, it helps.”

A strange expression flitted over his father’s face, quickly fought down with a stretch of his jaw. “I get that he’s the only one who knows what you went through, who understands,” his dad said. He drummed his fingers on his knee and looked anywhere except at Stiles. For a long moment, he said nothing. Stiles watched the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed.

“Dad?”

“You’re sixteen, Stiles,” his dad said, voice soft. “You have to understand, I am concerned that you suddenly have this very… very _close_ relationship with an adult. An adult with a history of troubled behavior. The way you’re obsessing over this...”

What? No, this couldn’t be happening. His heart hammered frantically, chest going tight. For a moment, it felt like Stiles couldn’t even breathe, but he forced his face to stay motionless even as the pain lanced through him. No, no, no, his dad could _not_ find out about them.

Meeting Stiles’s eyes with a gentle sort of sympathy on his face, his father asked, “Son, has Peter Hale made any sort of advances toward you?”

Stiles felt like he might throw up. “No!” he said, voice cracking, and he realized he was close to crying.

He could tell immediately from the look on his father’s face that he didn’t believe him.

“No,” Stiles said with more conviction this time. He dove for some sort of misdirection to explain away his sudden show of emotion. His voice sounded thick, and he was sure his eyes were going watery. “Dad, I swear it’s not like – you just won’t understand, okay? It’s not like that. You’re not gonna understand.” He couldn’t fucking breathe, his chest rising and falling too quickly as he sucked in air.

“Stiles?” His dad stood up, moving toward the bed. “Stiles, calm down, it’s alright. You’re not in trouble here, I promise.”

“It’s not like that!” Stiles insisted.

His dad held out his hands, placating as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Okay, okay. It’s not, then. Take a deep breath. Slow. Count, alright?”

Stiles did as he was told, focusing on the breathing first. He closed his eyes and counted as he dragged air in, then counted as he pushed it out. He felt his dad’s hand on his chest, hand splayed out to feel the rise and fall of his breathing. His breathing slowed, but the pain stayed in his chest, clinging to the backs of his ribs.

His dad said, “Why don’t you explain to me what it _is_ like?”

Stiles opened his eyes. He tried to look at his dad’s face, but he couldn’t. He was going to have to give up a little bit of the truth to save the bigger secret. And he couldn’t admit this to his father’s face. He looked toward his window. “When I was a ghost,” he said, barely more than a whisper, “I couldn’t touch anything. Walls, floors, living people. Couldn’t feel anything. I didn’t get cold or hot. I couldn’t feel the air. It was dangerous. I could float away. Fade into nothing and stop existing.” Thinking about that abyss was exactly the last thing he needed to think about so soon after a panic attack. Stiles could feel himself starting to ramp up again.

“But you could touch Peter,” his father said, pulling him back to the conversation.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed.

“And when you were touching, was it…?”

Stiles shook his head. “No. No, we were just – we were trying to stay grounded. We would...” He felt himself flush, though the truth would have been much harder to tell his dad than this lie. Stiles blew out a breath. “We would hold hands and stuff.”

“Okay.” His dad squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you for explaining.”

* * *

  
  


After Kali’s death, Ethan and Aiden were quick to come to their side. The plan was simple: stage a Darach kidnapping at their apartment so Deucalion would think they had both been taken. With the prospect of his remaining two pack members being killed, he would have no choice but to search for them, to try to save them.

They led him directly to the old Hale house, where the twins had, after great protestation, allowed Stiles to tie them up in the front room. It was far enough from Peter’s grave that the stench of death could be mistaken for a psychological suggestion, something that came on at the very idea of the house and what had happened there.

The Darach stood in the center of the room, between Deucalion and his pack, her eyes alight with magic. “I hear you got to Kali before I could,” she said.

“Julia,” he said and laughed. “You know, I’ve suspected it was you for a while now. Kali never knew, though. I thought about telling her, while she died. She went too quickly.”

Her magic surged around her, and Stiles was sure Deucalion could smell it. He stood off to the side, clutching a rifle, masked by a simple cloaking spell that the Darach had helped him with.

“You haven’t completed your little spell,” Deucalion said. “You’re not yet strong enough to face me.” His face began to contort, and Stiles knew he would need to act fast, before the alpha shifted and regained his sight.

Stiles aimed, blew out a breath, then pulled the trigger. The wolfsbane tranquilizer struck Deucalion in the back. He spun around, eyes blazing red in fury as they fixed on Stiles. He took half a step, then collapsed. Stiles stared at the alpha’s body, pulse racing and not sure if he could trust that he was well and truly unconscious.

He heard two quick slicing noises, then thuds as Ethan and Aiden dropped to the ground, their claws extended.

“Good luck with your little spell, Stiles,” the Darach – Julia – Ms. Blake – _whoever_ she was – said. “Don’t forget your final essay for next week.” And in a rush of wind, she was gone.

Stiles set the rifle down and fumbled for his phone. His hands shook while he pulled up a text to Lydia.

“Stiles?” Ethan said. The twins had walked over to Deucalion’s unconscious form. Aiden’s stood over him, staring. Ethan, on the other hand, had fixed his gaze on Stiles. “Are you alright? Your heart is...”

“I’m fine,” Stiles assured him. “Just a little adrenaline rush.”

They carried Deucalion to the back room, to Peter’s grave, while they waited for Lydia to arrive. Stiles barely helped at all with the lifting, but he felt a little short of breath by the end of it anyway. Despite the preservative rinses Stiles had been pouring over the body, the stench of rotting flesh had become nearly overpowering.

Stiles had already done most of the work positioning the mirrors. Lydia would have to turn the final mirror and position Peter and the alpha together.

“It’s going to kill him?” Aiden asked, eyes still fixed on his alpha.

“Yes,” Stiles agreed. “When we performed the spell during the Worm Moon, it was amplified, so it just sapped Derek of his energy. On a regular full moon, it would have fed on his energy, then his alpha spark, and then his life force. The idea this time was to use at least three of you. It probably would have still taken all of your alpha sparks, but it wouldn’t have been lethal.”

“Have you ever killed anyone before?” Ethan asked.

Stiles shook his head and murmured, “I’ll do what I have to do to make this happen. To save him.”

Lydia arrived. She made a show of complaining while she manipulated Peter’s rotting fingers around Deucalion’s wrist.

“The most important things usually require getting your hands a little dirty, Lyds,” Stiles advised.

Lydia turned to look at him, lips pursed. “You know, you haven’t sounded like yourself much lately,” she commented. She was right, of course. That little turn of phrase had been one of Peter’s. Lydia made her way to the final mirror, hands poised to turn it. “Ready?”

Stiles nodded.

The beams of moonlight darted from mirror to mirror, finally shining down into the hole in the floor, the grave. Deucalion screamed, his body bowing in agony.

Ethan lunged for the grave, and for a moment, Stiles was sure he would break the connection. Instead, he reached down and grabbed Peter’s other hand. He roared, his face immediately contorting in pain, eyes blazing red.

“Ethan!” Aiden gasped, doubling over in pain. He staggered toward the hole, but fell to his knees before he could reach it. Instead, he grasped his twin’s free hand, stretched out on the ground. He echoed the roar. Both of their eyes shone red in the darkness. Then, slowly, faded to blue.

Something struck Stiles in the middle of his back, knocking him to his knees.

“We had a deal!” the Darach snarled. “You said he would die.”

Stiles turned toward her, making to stand before the back of her hand caught him in the jaw, knocking him backward with inhuman strength.

He hit the ground hard enough that it knocked the air out of him. Stiles could only lay there, struggling to breathe, watching as she advanced on the three alphas surrounding Peter’s grave.

Why hadn’t he come out of the grave yet? Had the spell not worked?

His vision started to blur around the edges. He could see Lydia, huddled back against the wall, but he couldn’t make out her expression. The Darach seized both of the twins by their arms and flung them out of her way.

She was too close to Peter’s body. Or Peter. Why wasn’t he alive?

Standing over Deucalion, she made a movement that Stiles couldn’t parse at first. Then he saw the glint of metal and recognized a knife in her hand. He wheezed painfully and blinked, trying to clear his eyes.

Peter lunged from his grave all at once, snarling as he rushed forward and slashed his claws through the Darach’s throat. She collapsed in a spray of blood.

Naked, ash-coated, flesh still shifting as it healed away the rot, Peter walked toward Stiles.

Fuck, he’d never had the wind knocked out of him this badly before. His breath wouldn’t come back. His chest burned. Stiles tried to say Peter’s name, but he couldn’t make a sound.

Peter crouched beside him and placed a hand on Stiles’s chest. “Lydia, go get the car. Now.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, though she was already moving for the door.

“His heart,” Peter said. “Something’s wrong with his heart.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles fell into a haze of pain and confusion. He could feel Peter carrying him, holding him against his chest while his head lolled backward and everything looked upside-down, blurry. Shapes appeared through the trees. Formless demons rushing at him from all sides, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t fight them, couldn’t even warn Peter that they were coming.

Then he was in the car, on the back seat, his head pillowed on Peter’s thigh. Peter had clothes on, the ones Stiles had brought for him, and he was wiping his face with something white. On the first swipe, the ash came away. On the second, the skin came away, leaving meat and bone and emptiness as his skin started to melt away, dissolving. Stiles thrashed and tried to scream, but only a hoarse wheezing came out.

“Stiles! You have to stop moving,” Peter said as his flesh disintegrated.

“What’s happening to him?” Lydia asked, and Stiles couldn’t see her, but he knew her skin must be falling off, too. Dying, decaying.

Then Mrs. McCall was standing over him, saying, “...tachycardia and shortness of breath. He’s been in and out of consciousness...” She reached over him, grasping a large wooden panel and pulling it down over him. A coffin lid, he realized. He was in a coffin. He was dying, and they would bury him again.

* * *

  
  


When Stiles came to next, his body felt heavy, but the pain was gone. A tell-tale beeping told him he must be in the hospital. Next, he could make out Peter’s voice, reading softly.

“‘You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!’

It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask.”

Stiles let himself stay relaxed for a long while, listening to the soft rumble of Peter’s voice.

A hand closed around his wrist, thumb stroking his pulse point. Stiles blinked his eyes open slowly. It didn’t look like Peter had been able to clean up much after the resurrection. He still wore the t-shirt and jeans Stiles had brought to the house for him, and his hair hadn’t been washed. He looked exhausted.

“What happened?” Stiles asked, interrupting his reading.

“You poisoned yourself is what happened,” Peter said. He snapped the book closed before looking at Stiles.

“What?”

Peter set the book aside. “Long-term exposure to foxglove. You have digoxin toxicity. How many times did you forget to take the tonic after using that herb blend?”

A lot. It had been a lot of times.

Stiles swallowed. “Am I gonna be okay?”

Peter sighed and rubbed his wrist again. “You’ll be fine. You’re on medicine to clear it out of your system. They’ll give you a prescription and you’ll be out of here later today.”

That was good, at least. Stiles lifted Peter’s hand off his wrist and laced their fingers together instead. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said softly. “How is it?”

“It’s fine,” Peter said. Before Stiles could call bullshit, he added, “It’s overwhelming, but I knew what to expect from when you went through it.”

“Where’s my dad?” Stiles asked. His brain was slowly coming back on line, and he found there were a lot of loose ends, vital information he didn’t have.

Peter’s other hand came up to push through Stiles’s hair, which was longer now than the last time they had been alive together. “He was in here all night. I was out… well, cleaning things up at the house. I told him I would sit with you while he went home to shower.”

“And -”

“Lydia is fine. I imagine she’s nursing Aiden back to health. Same goes for Ethan and Danny. The rest of the pack knows you’re here, and Scott’s mother made it very clear that they weren’t allowed to crowd in here and get you worked up. Deucalion has left town. Did I miss anything?” Peter raised an eyebrow, lips twisted in amusement.

Stiles looked down at their joined hands. It looked like Peter had blood under his fingernails. “You killed her,” Stiles said softly. He had spent the past months trying to convince his friends that Peter was different, that his stint as a crazed killer had been just that – crazed, instinctual, the result of coma-induced madness. He came back to life, and the first thing he did was kill again.

As if sensing Stiles’s thoughts, Peter pulled both of his hands away and sat further back in his chair. “She had killed so many people, Stiles,” he said, and Stiles immediately thought, _You have, too_. “She was never going to stop.”

Would Peter stop?

“She wasn’t going to stop the sacrifices, and she wasn’t going to stop with Deucalion,” he continued. “You were next, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

Stiles didn’t know what to say, hadn’t had enough time to process everything that had happened or to think about everything that would happen next. He could remember things being tense between the two of them, early on, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling this awkward around Peter.

“Thank you for bringing me back,” Peter said after a few minutes.

Chewing his lip, Stiles looked over at him. “I promised I would.”

“I know,” Peter agreed. “But thank you, all the same.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the end!! I'm so glad that so many of you have been following along with this story and supporting me as I'm writing it. It really does help to keep me motivated, so thank you. As always, comments are super welcome, and you can also come say hi [on tumblr](https://luulapants.tumblr.com/).


	13. Indefinite Doubt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following Peter's resurrection, he and Stiles have to find their footing together in the living world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note, I added a tag for 'panic attacks' for this chapter. Also, I added the tag 'happy ending' because... well, honestly I'm sort of posting this while peeking through my fingers. You'll see. BUT I PROMISE THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING so please keep reading and do not close out halfway through the chapter and hop on a bus to come murder me.

The next time he woke, it was his father in the chair next to him. He had his laptop open on his knees, reading glasses perched low on his nose. At the sound of Stiles shifting to sit up, he looked up and pushed his glasses onto the top of his head. “Hey, kiddo. How are you feeling?”

“Alright,” Stiles said. “Like I slept forever.”

His dad closed the laptop and tucked it into his bag. “Just a few hours,” he assured him. “Peter said you were awake for a little over an hour when he was in here.”

“Where is he?” Stiles asked.

“Not sure. Probably to clean up, considering the man crawled out of a grave last night.” He hesitated, then added, “I got the sense he doesn’t care for hospitals.”

Shit. How could Stiles have forgotten? Peter had sat here with him for hours and hadn’t said a word about it. Stiles braced himself for a lecture about poisoning himself and decided to preempt it. “I’m really sorry about all of this,” he said.

His dad waved a hand to dismiss the apology. “I’m just glad you’re okay. Now, the doctors said we could get you checked out once you woke up. You feel up to it?”

* * *

  
  


Stiles didn’t see Peter for three days after that. To be fair, he was on strict bed rest for those three days until the poison completely flushed out of his system. His friends were allowed to visit in moderation – no more than two people, not for too long.

Scott came over the day he got out of the hospital. Stiles, once again, braced himself for a lecture. Scott had already told him off about the obsessing, after all, but it never came.

“Man, I’m sorry,” he said instead. “The day Deaton was taken, I must have seen you use that stuff half a dozen times, and I didn’t even _think_ about you not having the tonic on you.”

Stiles shifted uncomfortably where he sat on his bed, frowning. “Dude, what are you apologizing for? I mean, obviously, I forgot, too. It’s not like it was your job to tell me to take it.”

Scott opened his mouth to reply, then closed it and seemed to second-guess his response. He dropped onto Stiles’s desk chair, spinning side to side and looking at the floor. “Lately, you’ve smelled like it all the time,” Scott told him. “I thought, you know, maybe the smoke was just getting into your clothes, but it’s probably because it was building up in your bloodstream. I should have noticed.”

“I’m the one that fucked up here,” Stiles insisted, unsettled by this reaction. “You should be like… yelling at me for being stupid, not blaming yourself. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“Are you?” Scott asked, meeting Stiles’s eyes with an earnest concern.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Scott shrugged a shoulder. “Stiles, you’ve been different since you came back.” He sighed. “I’m not going to lecture you again about not talking to people and all that, but I feel like we’ve hardly seen one another since…” That would normally be where Scott trailed off, got awkward and didn’t want to say the ‘D’ word. He pressed on for once. “...since you died.”

“We’ve seen each other plenty,” Stiles insisted. “I see you at school, at Deaton’s –”

“And nowhere else,” Scott cut in. He held up a hand when Stiles opened his mouth to defend himself. “Listen, like I said, I’m not here to rag on you about it. I get it. You went through something really messed up, and you don’t know how to talk about it yet. It’s okay. But I’m gonna keep being worried about you and I’m gonna keep trying to watch out for you until you work through it. And it _is_ my job. Because I’m your alpha.”

Every word settled into Stiles like a worm wriggling in his gut. It had been easy to tell himself that his friends didn’t understand him, that they were either going to help him or they could get out of his way. It was hard to argue with honest love and concern, though. The only part of the speech he could grapple with was the last: “You’re not an alpha,” Stiles reminded him.

The corner of Scott’s mouth lifted in a lopsided smile. “Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

* * *

  
  


Allison stopped by after school the second day. She asked how he was feeling. They talked a bit about the resurrection and the Darach, though Lydia had already given her most of the details. Then, sitting side-by-side on the edge of Stiles’s bed, they sort of ran out of things to talk about.

“Um, so did they find a replacement English teacher?” he asked, and the question sounded awkward even to his own ears.

Allison bit her lip and glanced at him, fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. “Um, no,” she said. “There’s a sub, and since there’s only a few weeks left...”

Stiles nodded. “Mm, yeah, that makes sense.” He tried to think of something they had talked about before, but every other time she had been in his room these past few months, it had been for planning. They had never wandered too far off topic. He didn’t know if she knew about Scott’s true alpha thing, and things were still awkward between her and Scott, anyway.

After a too-long moment of silence, Allison laughed, a bitter sound, and stood up. She turned to face him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Stiles, I really thought maybe we could be friends?” she said, an emotional sort of tightness to her voice.

“We’re friends,” Stiles assured her.

She shook her head. “You know, after everything, I sort of thought… I sort of thought you’d be the one person that could understand why I did what I did after my mom died.” Her voice cracked on the last words. Her lower lip trembled. She looked at the cork board, still tucked into the corner of his room. He had started to take items down from it, but a few pictures and strings of yarn remained. “But this was just strategy, wasn’t it?”

Stiles looked down at his knees, not sure what to say. “You should probably go,” he mumbled. “I’m not supposed to get, y’know, worked up. What with...” He gestured toward his chest. “...y’know, the bad heart and all that.”

“They said it’s just temporary, right?” Allison asked. “You won’t have a bad heart once the poison is out?”

Stiles nodded and risked a look up at her.

Allison hugged her arms around herself, holding onto her elbows. She gave him a sad sort of smile. “Well, let’s try talking again once you’ve got your heart healed up.”

* * *

  
  


On the first day he was allowed back to school, Stiles returned home to find Peter in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed. He had found some better fitting clothing – a dark green v-neck and black jeans. Stiles wanted to say he looked less tired than he had the morning after the resurrection, but he didn’t.

Stiles thought about the days he had spent avoiding sleep after coming back and decided not to say anything about it. Peter would sleep when he was ready.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said instead, stepping into his room and dropping his backpack by the door. He saw Peter flinch at the noise and mentally chastised himself. “Oversensitive, huh?”

Peter nodded once and stood. His expression was cool, guarded, and it made Stiles uneasy in a way he hadn’t expected to be around Peter once he got back to the world of the living. “I’m going to leave for a little while,” Peter told him without segue.

The words hit like a punch to the gut. “Leave?” he echoed. “Where?”

“I have quite a bit of business to attend to,” Peter explained. “I didn’t exactly have time to get my affairs in order between the coma and death. My finances, for one, are in a complete disarray.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, because that made sense. Peter’s whole life had probably completely unraveled in his absence, and it wasn’t like he had family to fall back on, like Stiles did. Still, the way he said it had Stiles uneasy: the poised square of his shoulders, the cold clip to his tone, the way he looked Stiles directly in the eye, as if forcing himself to look nowhere else.

“So, like I said, it might be a little while.”

Stiles swallowed. His heart hammered uncomfortably in his chest, and if he hadn’t just had an appointment with a cardiologist the day before, if he wasn’t standing in front of a werewolf that would be able to _hear_ it, he would have worried that it was going off on him again.

This wasn’t how he had pictured this going. He had fantasized about Peter coming back to life. Extensively. There had been cinematic take-your-breath-away kisses, frantic touching, affection. Not Peter, standing two feet in front of him, talking about leaving.

Stiles licked his lips and took a hesitant step closer. He knew that touching was iffy for him, at first. Sometimes it had helped, and sometimes it had freaked him out. He extended a hand, tentative, and asked, “Can I…?”

Peter moved in suddenly, cupping Stiles’s jaw with his hand, wrapping the other around his waist. He claimed Stiles’s mouth with his own in a desperate – even a bit messy – kiss. Stiles clung to him, fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt as he kissed back with everything he had.

Then, just as suddenly, Peter let him go. He stepped back and took a breath, ran a hand through his hair and very conspicuously put his composed expression back on.

Stiles grinned, realizing what this detachment really was: self-control. “You’re coming back?”

“Yes,” Peter answered immediately. “I’m coming back.”

“Okay,” Stiles agreed. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

* * *

  
  


The last weeks of the school year passed in a blur. It had been so long since Stiles and his friends hadn’t had a threat hanging over their heads. People laughed louder, smiled brighter. They touched and hugged and kissed with a gleeful abandon that made Stiles feel like he could really do this. He could get back to living.

After the last day of school, he and Scott stayed up late playing video games and fell asleep on the living room floor. They slept in until noon the next day, then drove out to the preserve to see the new construction. In the end, they hadn’t been able to salvage anything but the basement, the rest of it razed to the ground to start anew.

“Looks kind of drafty,” Scott commented as they climbed out of the car.

Derek stood in the middle of the bright, fresh wood of the first level flooring. The frame of the house was up with just plywood down for the second and third floors. Stiles squinted at it and tried to visualize what it would look like with walls and windows and all of that. Then his mind flashed back to the photograph of the Hale family in Deaton’s book. He had never seen the house in person before it burned, but the frame matched the shape of the old house in the picture.

“We’re getting walls up today,” Derek assured them as they walked over. “At least on the first floor, tarps for the rest of it. The plumbers are coming to do installations this week, too.”

Scott clapped a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “It’s looking great. Team of werewolves on the job, the house is gonna be up in no time.”

Isaac and Cora were balanced precariously on beams on the second floor, swinging hammers. Stiles had to duck out of the way as Boyd and Erica came up the driveway with a huge panel of plywood.

“So in the old house, there was an office up here off the entryway,” Derek was saying, taking Scott on a tour of the open floorboards and pointing toward chalk lines on the wood. “We’re going to bump it out that way, make it more of a meeting room. I figure that’ll be easier for pack meetings, since...”

Their voices faded into the back of his mind as Stiles walked through what would become the front entryway of the new Hale house. Moving toward the back into what had been the old dining room, he could still see the torn-up floorboards revealing Peter’s burned body. The image faded slowly, giving way to a sort of fantasy image: a renovated dining room with a long wooden table, the pack sitting around it. Derek sat on one end, Scott on the other. The betas. Lydia, Allison, Jackson, and Danny. Even Ethan and Aiden. They chatted happily and passed bowls of food around.

Stiles turned, eyes flitting over the unmade rooms as they, in his mind’s eye, filled with imaginings of the future. A living room with big comfy couches, Cora hoarding a bowl of popcorn, Isaac and Allison curled up together. A kitchen full of laughter and messes, cake batter smeared on Boyd’s cheek and Erica kissing it off.

The images came on so vividly, so detailed, that Stiles felt almost dizzy with it. He couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t imagine himself in any of them. Where was he? Where was Peter? Off somewhere, maybe, just the two of them? Where did they fit into this world?

* * *

  
  


In the following weeks, Stiles occasionally felt a jolt of anxiety when he thought about Peter’s absence, but Peter had said he would be back. And, surely, he and Peter had long moved past lying for the sake of lying.

The day Peter returned, Stiles had met up with some of the guys for basketball at the park. The weather hadn’t done them any favors. A bright, blazing heat bore down on them from the noon sun. By the end of the game, they had all sweat through their shirts. The werewolves stripped theirs off afterward, soaked them in the drinking fountain, and wiped off with them. Stiles, already feeling the heat of sunburn on his arms and neck, kept his on and headed toward home.

A dark blue SUV pulled up next to him on the road, slowing to a crawl. As Stiles looked over, the window rolled down, and Peter smiled at him. “Need a ride?”

Stiles nearly tripped over his own feet in excitement, but managed to refrain from diving through the open window. “I would have pegged you for a sports car kind of guy,” he commented. It was a smaller SUV, a recent model but not brand new.

Peter shrugged a shoulder as the car came to a stop. With a click, the doors unlocked, and Stiles climbed in. Out of the glare of sunlight, he could see that Peter had cleaned up quite a bit. He had cut his hair short and allowed a goatee to grow, well-groomed, which fit his face nicely.

“Sorry, I’m gonna sweat on your seats,” Stiles said.

“They’re leather.” Stiles thought about leaning across the cab to kiss Peter in greeting, but before he could, Peter said, “Buckle up,” and started to drive off again.

He buckled up. “So did you get everything done that you needed to do?”

“Just about,” Peter agreed enigmatically. He rolled the window up. Stiles closed his eyes and sighed in relief as the air conditioning hit his sweat-soaked skin. “I do have one more thing I need to take care of.”

“What’s that?” Stiles asked.

“You.”

Stiles opened his eyes. Peter had his eyes fixed on the road ahead, expression carefully neutral. His heart thudded in his chest uncertainly. One of these days, Stiles thought, he would know where he and Peter stood and would be able to look at him without this gut-twisting mix of anxiety and hope.

“I know I already thanked you for everything you did,” Peter said, “but I want to say it again. Thank you. I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Stiles insisted.

Peter ignored him. “That said, this little _tryst_ between us is over.”

It felt like a weight had fallen onto Stiles, pinning him to the seat. He had to have misheard that. Right? Peter couldn’t actually mean it was _over_. “What?” The word came out choked, too quiet.

“I don’t want to continue it,” Peter said simply. He glanced at Stiles, but his expression gave nothing away.

Over the rushing sound in his ears, Stiles recognized that cool, calculating tone – the one Peter used when he was making a move in a strategy. A little surge of anger found him. “What the _fuck_ , Peter?” he demanded. “What is this about? What are you playing at?”

“What am I playing at?” Peter laughed, and Stiles could _strangle_ him, he was so mad. “Stiles, honestly, what did you think was going to happen? We were going to be together and go on movie dates and get married? Be realistic. I am who I am, and you are who you are.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean!”

“I mean you’re a child,” Peter snapped. “I’m twice your age. It’s completely inappropriate.”

“I’m a _child_?” Stiles echoed with an incredulous huff. “I wasn’t a child when you were offering me the bite. I wasn’t a child when you were _fucking me_.”

“You were a useful ally while I needed you -”

“FUCK YOU!” Stiles exploded.

Peter turned and glared at him. “Honestly, throwing a tantrum is hardly helping your case here.”

Stiles’s throat felt tight, and he couldn’t tell yet if it was anger or heartache or both. “What is this really about, Peter? Don’t bullshit me right now!”

“It’s -” Peter looked up and swore, slamming on the breaks. He was just a moment too late, a soft thump as they hit the rear bumper of the car ahead of them. “FUCK!” Peter slammed his hands against the steering wheel, then let out a slow breath. “Stay here,” he muttered.

He put the car in park and turned the flashers on, then got out. Stiles watched through the windshield as he talked to a woman in the car in front of them. They hadn’t hit her very hard – it had barely jolted Stiles, so he couldn’t imagine there would be much damage. Peter and the woman both snapped a couple of pictures of the bumpers.

What the fuck was happening? Stiles felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he knew he couldn’t blame it on the foxglove this time. Peter was making it sound like he had just been using Stiles, playing on his emotions to keep him as an ally. But that didn’t make any sense. If he had really wanted to use Stiles and dump him, he would have let Lydia resurrect just himself and left Stiles behind. He had seen the honesty in Peter’s admissions, his expressions. The way he held Stiles. That couldn’t have been an act.

Peter’s conversation lasted no longer than a minute, after which Peter ducked his head in a gracious gesture and passed the woman a card from his wallet.

When he got back in the car, Stiles mumbled, “I know what you’re doing.”

“Paying attention to teenage melodrama instead of the road?” Peter replied. He put on his blinker and turned onto a side road toward the downtown area.

“You’re trying to make me hate you so I won’t try to push back while you dump me for whatever the self-pitying, bullshit real reason is.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Peter muttered. “You’re sixteen.”

“I’m seventeen in a month.”

“Oh, lovely, that makes a relationship with an adult completely acceptable, then.”

Stiles growled in frustration. “Suddenly you’re obsessed with morals?”

“The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished,” Peter quoted. Sherlock. Stiles couldn’t remember the story.

“All of your stories are half-told!” Stiles snapped. “That’s the infuriating thing about you! And you _never_ cared about this crap before,”

“Believe it or not, the age of consent means a whole lot less when you’re dead.”

Realization hit Stiles suddenly. “You bastard,” he laughed, shaking his head. “You didn’t leave. When my dad asked to talk to me alone before the resurrection, you didn’t leave.”

“He was right to be concerned,” Peter said, not even trying to deny it. “Do you think I liked hearing him ask about me like some sort of sexual predator?”

“He’s my dad,” Stiles protested. “Of course he’s going to treat me like a child.”

“You practically had a panic attack at the prospect of him finding out,” Peter reminded him.

“I was having chest pains from the foxglove!”

“And that’s another thing.” They turned into an alley with diagonal parking, and Peter pulled into a space. “You almost died because you were too busy obsessing over my situation to take care of yourself. You _still_ haven’t dealt with what happened to you.”

Stiles groaned and leaned back against the door. “I’m dealing!”

“You’re stalling.”

He had to be able to talk his way out of this. There was no way they had been through everything they had been through, had waited this long to be together for real, only to have Peter end things. “Look,” Stiles bargained, “I know I was reckless – stupid, even. I know. We must always protect ourselves first -”

“Would you listen to yourself?” Peter snarled, and his tone was so violent it caught Stiles off-guard.

He flinched back from Peter, blinking in surprise. Peter blew out a breath, and Stiles saw that his claws had come out. His chest was rising and falling rapidly, like it was taking all of his effort to stay in control.

“You’re – you’re _quoting me_ the way I quote Sherlock Holmes,” he spat. “You don’t even sound like yourself anymore. You once told me that you didn’t want to be like me, so why are you trying so damn hard to be?”

Stiles winced. He didn’t have a response, couldn’t even begin to form one.

Peter stared at him, and he looked _sad_. Heartbroken. “You don’t love me, Stiles,” Peter told him softly. “You just think I have answers. You think being like me will make it so you don’t have to cope with everything you’ve been through. Trust me, it’s not true.”

For the life of him, Stiles couldn’t conjure a word in his defense. He looked out the window at the alley and frowned. “Where are we?”

“My apartment building.” Peter unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door. “The car is yours. We’re just dropping me off.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles balked.

“I told you I would replace the Jeep,” Peter said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “The title is in the glove box. Sorry about the front bumper.” He got out of the car.

“You’re dumping me and giving me a car,” Stiles summed up, not sure if he was pissed off or impressed by the level of absurdity.

Peter smirked. “It’s for the public good – you’re a very distracting passenger.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles gave himself a good two weeks to wallow over being dumped. Scott came over most nights for video games and junk food and to listen to Stiles bitch about what a raging asshole Peter was. He started magic lessons with Deaton twice a week. He worked on the pack house with the others. It helped, being busy. Having things to focus on aside from how hollowed out he felt any time he thought about Peter.

Things seemed to balance out. Then his birthday rolled around. They didn’t make a huge thing out of it. When he and Scott got to the pack house, everyone wished him a happy birthday, and then they got back to work as usual.

He kept catching on the same thought, all day. Every year, his birthday had been a celebration that he’d been alive for another year. But did seventeen even count this birthday? Should he be celebrating six weeks later now? Maybe it was a stupid semantic to get hung up on, but every time the thought hit him, Stiles felt himself sink a little lower.

When they were done, he and Scott went back to Stiles’s house for dinner and cake with his dad. He found he couldn’t keep up with conversation well during dinner, that same thought circling around and around in his mind, now joined by thinking about how close he’d come to never turning seventeen and wondering if he would make it to eighteen, nineteen. Ages that had once seemed inevitable, given, were suddenly questions in his mind. Scott and his dad seemed to notice, but they did their best to hold up the conversation for him.

His dad got up to get the cake off the counter, and Stiles finally felt something give inside of himself.

“Stiles?” Scott said a moment before it happened.

Stiles burst into tears, shoulders shaking as he was suddenly overtaken by emotion. It felt like a dam had broken and things he had pinned back for months were rushing at him from every direction. Fear and grief and anger and a hollow, desolate sort of helplessness that sat deep in his core. He wiped at his eyes, but the tears kept coming in a relentless torrent.

He could feel his father and Scott on either side of him, chairs pulled closer, hands on his back.

“It’s alright, son, just take a deep breath,” he dad murmured.

“What’s going on, man?” Scott asked.

Stiles didn’t know how to begin to explain what was happening. He wasn’t even sure _he_ understood what was happening to him, just that it hurt. The only thing that had ever hurt worse was dying.

And, just like that, he was thinking about that time, alone in the trunk of his Jeep, wracked with pain and scared and alone, how he had been powerless to stop everything. He fell forward onto the table, head cradled in his arms as he let it all go. He was sobbing so loudly, it practically sounded like screaming, but he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop.

When he finally did find words, Stiles said, “I don’t – I don’t think there’s anything – any afterlife. I think it’s just – it’s just nothing. I don’t think there’s anything after this. I think you just disappear. I think Mom just disappeared. I think she’s just gone, and I – I can’t, I -” He choked on his own words and sobbed louder. He felt himself pulled to the side, tugged in tight against his dad’s chest while Scott rubbed his back.

Once the words started, it felt impossible to stop them. He heard himself speaking like he was listening from outside of himself, babbling, “What if I die again? I don’t want to die. I don’t want to disappear. I’m so fucking scared all the time. I cross the street, and I think, what if I get hit by a car? Or I go to sleep, and I think, what if I don’t wake up? Or what if we get attacked again? It hurt so bad. It hurt so bad when I died, and I can still – I can _feel it_.”

Feelings Stiles hadn’t even acknowledged to himself poured out in a breathless, sobbing stream of confessions. Some of it, he thought, they probably couldn’t even understand through his hysteria.

He hadn’t noticed either of them breaking away to contact Melissa, but he wasn’t exactly in an observant state of mind. All he knew was that she was there after a while, crouching next to him while Scott stepped back.

“Stiles, sweetie?” she said. “I’m sorry you’re feeling like this. It sounds like you’ve been holding onto all of this for a long time now, and sometimes this is what happens. You push all of those bad feelings down, and then you have to feel them all at once when they finally come up. But I want you to listen to me, okay? This is the worst it’s ever going to feel. You’re getting it all out in the open, so you won’t have to do this again. It won’t be this bad again.”

Stiles latched onto those words like a lifeline. This was as bad as it got. It wouldn’t be like this ever again. That made it a little more bearable, a little less overwhelming. He wasn’t going to feel this way forever. He sniffled and nodded that he understood.

“I have some anti-anxiety medication that would help you settle down, but it’s up to you. Do you want to take it?” she asked.

God, yes. He just wanted this to stop. Stiles’s body felt achy and weak from trembling so long. He hadn’t thought it was possible to be this upset for this long. When he nodded, his dad helped him lift a glass of water to swallow the pills. It took a little while for them to kick in, but Stiles felt himself slowly starting to unwind, the upset giving way to simple exhaustion.

They ended up on the couch, Stiles curled up against his dad’s side, head pillowed on his shoulder. Scott had a hand on his ankle, pulling some of the aches and discomforts from him. Melissa sat in the arm chair.

His dad rubbed his back slowly. “There you are,” he kept saying, variations on the same murmured comforts over and over. “I’ve got you. We’re going to get through this, Stiles, alright? We’ll get through it together. We’re right here for you.”

* * *

  
  


Melissa had been right: it never got that bad ever again, but things did suck for a while. Deaton helped him find a therapist in-the-know about the supernatural. She was on the other side of the country with a very full case load, so they could only have sessions over Skype and not very often. Still, it helped, and she coached him through how to use half-truths to explain his situation to a psychiatrist, so he could get some anti-anxiety medication prescribed.

The pack hardly ever left him alone. Stiles didn’t think Scott had shared the details of what he’d said that night, but he’d obviously at least told them that Stiles was finally going through his issues. He and Scott slept over at each other’s houses more often than not. Sometimes Isaac or Boyd or Danny stayed over, too. They spent a lot of days at the Hale House, sanding and plastering walls and laying floorboards. Hell, even Ethan and Aiden had been hanging around, trying to ingratiate themselves with the pack.

A week after his birthday, Lydia invited him, Danny, and Allison over for the first _real_ meeting of the Squishy Non-Werewolves Club. It was nice. They celebrated their non-werewolf-ness by making a reasonable amount of food – which would not have fed a small army, thank you very much – and eating it around Lydia’s dining room table.

“So, Danny, what’s it like being one of the last humans on the lacrosse team?” Lydia teased.

“Seriously,” he griped. “How the hell is anyone supposed to keep up with those assholes?”

“Stiles, do you think you’ll join the team again?” Allison asked.

Stiles shrugged a shoulder. “I dunno, I haven’t really been keeping up with, y’know, the fitness.” He gestured toward his gangly self.

Allison smiled. “We could start running together, if you want,” she said, and Stiles took it for the peace offering it was.

“Yeah, might be nice to run with someone that doesn’t drop to all fours,” he agreed.

“You know what I’ve been wanting to do?” Lydia cut in. “Martial arts classes.” When all three of them gave her looks of surprise, she added, “What? Come on, we’re all involved in some crazy stuff now. I think it would make us all feel a little safer. Allison, I know you already had all sorts of training with your family, but it could still be fun.”

Just like that, Stiles found his schedule filling out. Stiles and Allison ran in the preserve three times a week in the mornings. Thursday night kickboxing classes at the local community center. Fridays, Derek started hosting a pack movie night at the loft, which would move to the house once it was finished.

Sundays, the Squishy Non-Werewolves Club got together. In August, the four of them took a weekend trip up to Satomi’s territory to visit Jackson, who would be returning for the fall semester. He had started dating a guy in Satomi’s pack, Brett, and the meditation seemed to be paying off.

On the drive back, Allison leaned back back between the front seats to look at Lydia and Danny in the back. “So are we not going to talk about Jackson dating a guy, then?”

“I knew,” Danny said. “Jackson didn’t know, but I sure as hell did.”

Lydia hummed her agreement. “Not to get into details, but there were _signs_.”

Stiles smirked, focused on the road as they merged onto the highway. “Forget about dating a dude, can we talk about the fact that Brett is as hot as the fucking sun?”

“Isn’t he a little young for your tastes?” Lydia teased, and Stiles expected it to sting. It didn’t. He laughed and flipped her off over his shoulder.

* * *

  
  


Peter made himself scarce all summer, but he started to come around more in the fall, after the Hale house was finished. It didn’t feel great, seeing him hovering on the edge of a pack meeting or reading a book in the living room. Stiles didn’t really know where they stood anymore. They had gotten so close, so quickly. It felt odd for there to be such a gulf between them.

In November, his dad connected a string of missing person reports from just outside county lines to a family of wendigos living in the next town over. The pack stood around the meeting room, the plans for the wendigo house spread out in the middle of the room as Derek described the ambush he wanted to organize.

“That’s a suicide mission,” Peter snapped. “You’re an idiot.” He had issues with cowing to Derek’s authority.

Derek flashed his eyes. “If you don’t like the way we run things here, you’re welcome to shut up and find another pack. I wasn’t asking for your opinion.”

“I would say my opinion counts for something, seeing as I’ve been dead before,” Peter quipped. He turned. “How about you, Stiles? You eager to try that again?”

Scott growled a warning beside him. Stiles set a hand on Scott’s shoulder to settle him, then stepped up to the table. “I think what Peter _would_ have said, if he wasn’t allergic to being helpful,” he said, “is that we haven’t accounted for perimeter defenses. We’d essentially be laying siege to their fortified base. It’s way safer to either lure them out or get a man on the inside.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Peter look at him with a soft look of pride, and Stiles hated how it made his stomach twist in pleasure. Then the man reached over and settled a hand on the back of Stiles’s neck – a light, familiar touch. “Exactly,” he praised.

Stiles shoved his arm away and muttered, “Fuck off.”

* * *

  
  


“Maybe it’s something to do with having two alphas on one territory,” Lydia reasoned, bunching her shoulders up as she curled toward the fire. She had a cup of cocoa clasped between her gloved hands.

Jackson shook his head, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to ward off the cold. They weren’t back together, but they seemed to have reclaimed the emotional intimacy they had shared before. “That doesn’t make sense,” he told her. “Two alphas should make the boundaries stronger.”

It was mid-March, a week from the Worm Moon, and Derek had decided to have their first bonfire of the year. The air was still fairly frigid at night, but between the wolves, the cocoa, and the fire, they were keeping warm enough.

“He’s right,” Derek said. He had brought a fold-out camping chair to sit in while most of the rest of the pack sat on the logs that surrounded the fire pit. “There’s no reason these things should keep happening. Our territory boundaries should be stronger than this.”

“Alright, I think I found it,” Scott said. He and Isaac had a map of the preserve spread out on the grass between the fire and Derek’s chair. “Here,” he said. “This is where I picked up their scent.”

Peter had been staring into the fire, seemingly oblivious to the discussion going on around him. The first time they had one of these bonfires, Stiles had wanted to ask if the fire bothered him, if it was going to trigger something. Then he reminded himself that it _wasn’t his business_. Not anymore. And, anyway, Peter kept coming to these things, so either this was self-punishment or he didn’t mind.

Seemingly pulled out of his trance, Peter glanced down at the map and frowned. “Point that out again?” He stared at the map for a long moment, then looked up at Stiles. “Oh,” he said.

“Oh what?” Stiles asked, immediately suspicious. He got up from his spot on the opposite side of the fire and walked over to the map.

It was along the edge of the territory at the north end of the preserve. Stiles had gotten quite well-acquainted with the preserve over the past year or so, but it took a moment before the spot on the map clicked into place in his brain.

He looked at Peter with a wild, accusatory look. “You’re shitting me.”

“What?” Derek asked, sitting up a little straighter in his chair.

Stiles didn’t take his eyes off Peter. “When we were ghosts, we weakened that spot of the boundary to let an omega in and get the hunters off Lydia,” he explained. “Peter, that was over a year ago! Are you saying the boundary has been open there this whole time?”

“I honestly forgot,” Peter said, holding his hands up in a placating manner. “There was a lot going on at the time, if you remember.”

“We could have gone out there to fix this any time!” Stiles squawked. “How many of the things we’ve been fighting this past year came in because that boundary was down!”

Peter huffed a put-upon sigh and glanced away. “Who can say?” he evaded. “I’m sure the alpha pack would have found their way in regardless -”

“ _What!”_ several voices shouted at once.

“Now, now, I don’t think we can say that their arrival was a strictly _bad_ thing,” Peter insisted. “After all, Cora and the twins wouldn’t even be here if not for -”

“They brought the Darach, Peter!” Stiles snarled, storming closer. “She killed so many people!”

Peter smiled at him as if this were all a funny little game to him. “Ah, doesn’t this bring back memories, sweetheart?” he teased. “You blaming me for choices you made?”

Stiles punched him in the mouth. The blow landed hard enough to make Peter’s head snap to the side, but the tiny split in his lip was healed before Stiles had even finished shaking his aching hand.

“On that note,” Peter muttered, getting to his feet. He turned and headed off in the direction of his car.

Stiles couldn’t let him go off like that with the last word. He couldn’t stand it. All of that anger and unresolved bullshit still stewing between the two of them smoldered inside of him, desperate to explode outward. He shouted, “I can’t believe I ever thought I was in love with you!”

He could feel the eyes of the pack on him. Some of them had known. Others, he thought, probably suspected. But there were no secrets about it now.

Peter stopped and turned back to look at him. Maybe it was the play of shadows from the night and the fire, but Stiles could have sworn he saw hurt in Peter’s expression.

* * *

  
  


He and Deaton spent the next morning fixing the boundary, and Stiles couldn’t help but think, as he ran his hand over the invisible barrier, about how they had broken it in the first place. _I want you to think about how much you hate me_. He wondered if Peter still hated himself, the way he had then. Stiles knew he had when he had given up the first resurrection, when he admitted to his grief over killing Laura.

Stiles had spent a lot of the past year sifting through the things he’d gone through surrounding his death, but he still hadn’t quite figured out how to reconcile his feelings for Peter. What he had shouted the night before had been a lie, something intended to hurt him, but he didn’t think Peter had been listening to his heartbeat enough to notice.

That evening, Stiles put a load of laundry in the wash, then headed back to his room to find his phone on his bed, the notification light blinking.

_From Peter: pawn d4_

His pulse picked up, and Stiles couldn’t help the little smile that pulled at his lips. Peter always played black when they had played before, always letting Stiles make the opening move.

_To Peter: knight f6_

Stiles sat on his bed, getting comfortable with his eyes locked on his screen as Peter typed. They started with a Queen’s Gambit, which quickly morphed into a Ragozin Defense, Stiles taking on the role of the aggressor, playing for the center. It was all very by the book until Peter sent back an odd move: _knight d4_ to take his own knight. It took Stiles a second to realize what he even meant, closing his eyes and picturing the board. Because the knight he was supposed to be moving, the _defensively_ positioned knight, wasn’t even capable of that move, which meant he was moving his other knight. And, more importantly, Stiles’s pawn was positioned in defense.

He was sacrificing a knight. It was a bad move.

Stiles stared at the screen a moment longer, chewing on his lip.

_To Peter: you’re throwing the game_

_From Peter: I have a habit of doing that, don’t I?_

Stiles set his phone down and took a slow breath, heart thudding in his chest as he tried to figure out his next move, his next response.

He grabbed his phone and wallet, headed out to his car, and drove downtown to Peter’s apartment complex. The whole drive, he found himself working through their past conversations. He had been through their conversation, when Peter dumped him, in his mind a thousand times. Now, he held it up against all of their other interactions, finding new patterns:

Peter accusing Stiles of trying to be like him.

_I want you to think about how much you hate me._

_We needed to be focused on the same thing._

_You think being like me will make it so you don’t have to cope with everything you’ve been through._

_Trust me, it’s not true._

Stiles had never actually been to Peter’s apartment, just to the parking lot outside. In the lobby, he found a directory of residents, just last names. There were no Hales listed. His eyes scanned down the list, trying to parse through what sort of pseudonym Peter would choose. There were no chess-related names, no Kings or Rooks. No Holmes or Watson or Doyle either.

“Stiles?”

When he looked up, he saw Peter leaning over the third floor railing. “You’re not in the directory,” Stiles said, pointing at it.

“I know,” he said. “Come upstairs.”

Peter’s apartment was nice, but more modest than Stiles had expected. The fixtures and appliances all looked new and sleek, wood floors, high ceilings and big windows. Size-wise, it wasn’t much: A small living area with a couch on one end and a small dining table on the other. A kitchen, separated by a half-wall with a counter top. Two doors on the other side of the apartment that, presumably, lead to a bedroom and bathroom.

“It’s nice,” Stiles said, shifting from foot to foot in the entryway.

“You’re wearing pajamas,” Peter observed.

Stiles looked down at himself and realized that, yes, yes he was. “I was doing laundry,” he explained. “I didn’t think to change before I headed over.”

Peter himself was in a soft gray hoodie and jeans, hair loose and curling at the ends, not slicked back as he usually wore it. His feet were bare. “Why are you here, Stiles?” he asked.

Biting his lip, Stiles tried to piece his racing thoughts from the car ride over into coherent words. “I don’t want to be like you,” he said, “but it’s not because I hate you.” He met Peter’s eyes, willing him to understand and to believe everything he said. “It wasn’t fair of me to put that on you, to make getting you back my magical fix for everything. And I’m sure seeing someone that you cared about turning into someone that you… I mean, I really hope you don’t still hate yourself over everything, but I’m sure, back then, to have me trying to be someone you didn’t even like...”

Peter took a step closer, and Stiles felt hope swell in his chest. “We both had a lot to work through,” Peter conceded.

Stiles nodded. “What I said the other night -”

“Was a lie,” Peter interrupted.

“You were listening to my heart?” Stiles asked.

Peter smiled. “No need. You’re a terrible liar.”

Stiles ducked his head. “Takes one to know one.” He licked his lips, desperately aware of the space between them. “Peter, I’m still not sure how to feel about the way we got together,” he admitted. “I think… I think you were right about it being desperate. At first, at least. But I care about you.” He looked up at Peter’s guarded expression. “I want to be with you.”

“I’m still too old for you,” Peter said, but his voice sounded unsteady.

“I’m eighteen in the summer. We can keep it quiet until then.”

Stiles expected another protest, another reason it couldn’t work. Instead, Peter said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Stiles asked, stunned. He honestly hadn’t thought it would be that easy.

“Okay,” Peter affirmed. Then he laughed and reached for Stiles, catching him by the elbow and reeling him in. “Come here.”

They met in a kiss, soft and nothing like any they had shared before. Stiles realized that it was only their second kiss alive. He whined at the thought, pressing in and opening his lips against Peter’s, deepening the kiss and licking into his mouth. They had to part for air before too long. Because, right, breathing. Stiles felt almost giddy at the prospect of having to breathe while he kissed Peter.

“I waited a really long time for that,” he murmured. Staying close, he looked into Peter’s eyes and bumped their noses together. “Don’t make me wait for anything else. Please.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed, tugging Stiles out of the entryway and toward the bedroom. “I won’t. I won’t make you wait ever again,” he said, and it was probably a lie, but Stiles liked to hear it anyway.

They took their time, losing themselves in kisses, fingers exploring real, corporeal flesh for the first time. Stiles had been right, a year previous, when he said it would feel different. The touch wasn’t as intense, but it felt more cohesive. When Peter ran his fingers down Stiles’s bare stomach to the top of his sleep pants, his whole body went hot and shivery. He could taste the salt on Peter’s skin as he dragged his mouth down his neck to his collarbone. With his lips pressed to Peter’s chest, he could feel the vibrations of his answering groan.

Stiles ended up astride Peter’s hips, both of them shirtless. Peter lay flat beneath him, staring at Stiles like he might be some vivid hallucination, a fantasy. He traced a hand up Stiles’s stomach. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Everything,” Stiles breathed.

Holding his hips, Peter flipped them over and nuzzled into Stiles’s neck. “I can hear your heart,” he said. “How it picks up when I touch you the right way...” He leaned up and caught Stiles’s earlobe between his teeth, and Stiles was sure that must be _the right way_ , because the feeling went straight to his dick. He moaned into the next kiss, lifting his hips as Peter tugged his pants out of the way, stroked a hand over his cock.

“Oh fuck,” Stiles gasped, head pressing back into the pillows as his back arched. “Fair warning, I am not gonna be struggling with ghost stamina.”

Peter laughed and ducked down to kiss at Stiles’s chest, tracing the tip of his tongue over one of his nipples. “Good,” he murmured, working his way lower. “Then I can make you come more than once.”

He was as good as his word on that. He sucked Stiles off at a lazy pace while he worked two lubed fingers into his ass. That much, Stiles was used to, relaxing easily into the stretch as he became overwhelmed by the stimulation. Stiles had a hand tangled in Peter’s hair, just long enough to tug on as he struggled not to thrust his hips too hard. “Peter,” he gasped. “Peter, m’gonna...”

After he came, Peter pulled off of his cock, but kept stretching him out, working a third finger in, which was a bit more of a stretch. Still, Stiles was relaxed from the orgasm. Peter stared down at him with a hungry expression. “I like that I can taste you like this,” he said. “And smell you. You smell so good like this, all worked up. You’re going to smell like me, after.”

Stiles nodded and reached for Peter, tugging him down to kiss him, tasting his own come on Peter’s tongue. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant taste, salty and a little bitter, but he liked it anyway. It tasted real. “Fuck me,” Stiles breathed against his lips.

The logistics of getting fucked in a corporeal body were a little more complicated than in astral projection. Peter worked him open a bit longer, then sat back on his haunches to stroke more lube onto his cock. “You’re nervous,” Peter said, not a question.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “I still want it.”

Peter nodded and slipped a pillow under Stiles’s hips. The first push hurt more than he expected, a burn that made him wince and gasp. “Sorry,” Peter said, starting to pull back.

Stiles wrapped his legs around Peter’s middle and shook his head. “It’s okay,” he insisted quickly. Peter wrapped a hand around Stiles’s waist, and black lines started to slide up it. “Stop, stop,” Stiles murmured, pushing his hand away. “I said it’s okay. It’s – I want it to -” It wasn’t like he wanted it to _hurt_ , which is what he almost said. He settled on, “I want it to feel real.”

Peter’s expression softened in understanding. “Relax, then,” he advised. “Bear down a little.”

That helped, but it still stretched uncomfortably. Stiles bit his lip and held onto Peter’s shoulders, breathing slowly until Peter was fully seated inside of him. “I’m okay,” he said, seeing the question forming on Peter’s face before he could voice it. “It’s just a lot. Kiss me.”

Peter kissed him, distracting him with it while he started to rock his hips in subtle little shifts. Stiles felt himself starting to adjust, the discomfort fading. He wrapped a hand around his own cock, stroking himself back to hardness, and that did the trick, getting him the rest of the way relaxed, the little movements starting to feel good.

“Move,” he mumbled against Peter’s mouth. “I’m good. I’m good. Please.”

“You are,” Peter murmured, doing as he was told and rolling his hips. It shot little sparks of pleasure up Stiles’s spine. “Too good for your own fucking good. I knew it from the day you yelled at me at the diner, when you found out who I was.” He groaned and lifted up so he could hold Stiles’s hips with both hands, pulling him down as he thrust in.

Stiles arched into his touch and thought about saying ‘I love you,’ but it didn’t feel right, not yet. He’d said it too soon, before, and for the wrong reasons. When he said it for real, he wanted Peter to know he had thought about it, that he meant it.

Instead, he said, “Peter,” over and over, a breathy chant as he planted his feet and did his best to match the rhythm of the thrusts. It didn’t take very long before he felt himself nearing his second orgasm. “Want you to come in me,” Stiles said. “Please.”

He jacked himself off in hard, quick strokes and closed his eyes, focusing on the feeling as Peter groaned above him and came. The sensation was enough to push Stiles over the edge with one last twist of his hand.

Afterward, they curled up together for a long time, heedless of the mess. Stiles had his head pillowed on Peter’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and the other sounds of his body. His stomach as it gurgled, the rush of his breath. The room smelled like sex, like sweat.

Stiles felt steady in that moment, grounded but not just by Peter. His life had stabilized over the past year, and this? This was just something nice that he got to have on top of all of that. He wouldn’t float off if they stopped touching. He could survive not being with him. They could be together just because they wanted to be.

“Hey Peter?” he said.

Peter hummed, and the rumble ran through his chest into Stiles’s cheek.

“Thanks for dumping me before.”

Peter lifted his head and looked down at Stiles, a curious sort of smile on his face. “You’re welcome,” he said, “but I want you to know, you’ve reached my limit on noble sacrifices. I won’t do it again.”

Stiles laughed and leaned up to kiss him. “Duly noted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW this story has been a journey to write! Thank you so much for reading through it all, and please leave a comment if you like - I absolutely love to hear from you.


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